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

Abstract

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”.