SdsA polymorph isolation and improvement of their crystal quality using nonconventional crystallization techniques

Crystal Growth of High-Quality Protein Crystals under the Presence of an Alternant Electric Field in Pulse-Wave Mode, and a Strong Magnetic Field with Radio Frequency Pulses Characterized by X-ray Diffraction

The first part of this research was devoted to investigating the effect of alternate current (AC) using four different types of wave modes (pulse-wave) at 2 Hz on the crystal growth of lysozyme in solution. The best results, in terms of size and crystal quality, were obtained when protein crystals were grown under the influence of electric fields in a very specific wave mode (“breathing” wave), giving the highest resolution up to 1.34 Å in X-ray diffraction analysis compared with controls and with those crystals grown in gel. In the second part, we evaluated the effect of a strong magnetic field of 16.5 Tesla combined with radiofrequency pulses of 0.43 μs on the crystal growth in gels of tetragonal hen egg white (HEW) lysozyme. The lysozyme crystals grown, both in solution applying breathing-wave and in gel under the influence of this strong magnetic field with pulses of radio frequencies, produced the larger-in-size crystals and the highest resolution structures. Data processing and refinement statistics are very good in terms of the resolution, mosaicity and Wilson B factor obtained for each crystal. Besides, electron density maps show well-defined and distinctly separated atoms at several selected tryptophan residues for the crystal grown using the “breathing wave pulses”.

Advanced Methods of Protein Crystallization

This chapter provides a review of different advanced methods that help to increase the success rate of a crystallization project, by producing larger and higher quality single crystals for determination of macromolecular structures by crystallographic methods. For this purpose, the chapter is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the fundamentals for understanding the crystallization process through different strategies based on physical and chemical approaches. The second part presents new approaches involved in more sophisticated methods not only for growing protein crystals but also for controlling the size and orientation of crystals through utilization of electromagnetic fields and other advanced techniques. The last section deals with three different aspects: the importance of microgravity, the use of ligands to stabilize proteins, and the use of microfluidics to obtain protein crystals. All these advanced methods will allow the readers to obtain suitable crystalline samples for high-resolution X-ray and neutron crystallography.