Effect of foreign particles on the growth of faceted crystal faces

Phosphorylation of osteopontin is required for inhibition of calcium oxalate crystallization

Under near-physiological pH, temperature, and ionic strength, a kinetics constant composition (CC) method was used to examine the roles of phosphorylation of a 14 amino acid segment (DDVDDTDDSHQSDE) corresponding to potential crystal binding domains within the osteopontin (OPN) sequence. The phosphorylated 14-mer OPN peptide segment significantly inhibits both the nucleation and growth of calcium oxalate monohydrate (COM), inhibiting nucleation by markedly increasing induction times and delaying subsequent growth by at least 50% at concentrations less than 44 nM. Molecular modeling predicts that the doubly phosphorylated peptide binds much more strongly to both (-101) and (010) faces of COM. The estimated binding energies are, in part, consistent with the CC experimental observations. Circular dichroism spectroscopy indicates that phosphorylation does not result in conformational changes in the secondary peptide structure, suggesting that the local binding of negatively charged phosphate side chains to crystal faces controls growth inhibition. These in vitro results reveal that the interactions between phosphorylated peptide and COM crystal faces are predominantly electrostatic, further supporting the importance of macromolecules rich in anionic side chains in the inhibition of kidney stone formation. In addition, the phosphorylation-deficient form of this segment fails to inhibit COM crystal growth up to concentrations of 1450 nM. However, at sufficiently high concentrations, this nonphosphorylated segment promotes COM nucleation. Dynamic light scattering (DLS) and small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) results confirm that aggregation of the nonphosphorylated peptide segment takes place in solution above 900 nM when the aggregated peptide particles may exceed a well-defined minimum size to be effective crystallization promoters.

Inducing dendrite formation using an atomic force microscope tip

Atomic force microscope (AFM) tip-induced nucleation, and dendrite growth of vapor deposited PETN films on Si (100) have been investigated at room temperature. The AFM tip induces a change from smooth and flat morphology to islands and dendrites, which is owing to the lowering and vanishing of 2-D nucleation barrier at the tip contact area; this action gives rise to the formation of large islands in the scanned area and dendrite growth along the scanning boundary.

From surface self-assembly to crystallization: prediction of protein crystallization conditions

A new criterion based on surface and volume diffusion kinetics was established to predict protein crystallization. Similar to the layer-by-layer crystal growth process of protein, the kinetics of the two-dimensional self-assembly of protein at the aqueous solution surface provides a convenient and reliable way to estimate the surface integration and the volume transport during protein crystallization. Both the surface and diffusion kinetics were estimated based on the protein self-assembly at the air/solution interface, which can be obtained by measuring the surface tension. A crystallization coefficient is found to provide an effective and reliable criterion to predict protein crystallization conditions. This criterion has been applied to lysozyme, concanavalin A and BSA crystallization, and it turns out to be very successful and more reliable than the second virial coefficient criterion.