The effect of mineral substrates on the crystallization of lysozyme

The sandwich method for protein crystallization and its effect on crystal growth

“…System stabilization includes the physical stabilization of liquid drop by slowing down the micro-circulation and isolating from external disturbance, and a slow change on the concentration of solution during the entire crystallization process (especially the critical nucleation stage), and so on. As heterogeneous nucleation and epitaxial growth are effective for inorganic crystal growth, a wide range of materials, such as mineral surfaces [7,8], lipid layers [9][10][11][12], porous silicon [13], chemically modified mica surfaces [14,15], protein thin film [16], and templates of poly-L-lysine surfaces [17,18], have been tested as substrates for protein crystallization, but none has been shown general effectiveness.…”

Influence of electrical potential on the crystallization and adhesion of potassium hydrogen tartrate crystals

“…Many efforts have been made in theoretical and experimental investigations to understand the role of physical properties of substrates in promoting crystallization through heterogeneous nucleation [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. It is suggested that the reduction of the free energy of formation of a new solid phase on a solid substrate is due to molecular interactions that take place at the substrate-solution interface [11][12][13].…”

Energy Barrier for Protein Adhesion and Crystal Nucleation on Flat Alien Substrates

“…Possible result of such interactions is arrangement of protein molecules at the interface into 2D or 3D crystal. Protein crystal formation could be promoted by mineral substrates [18,19], lipid layers [20][21][22][23] or chemically modified substrates [1,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. Here we present data for the energy difference ∆E between the average energy of protein molecules in solution and the energy, required in order to adhere to the given substrate.…”