Reduction in diffuso-convective disturbances in nanovolume protein crystallization experiments

Abstract

Preliminary studies suggest that protein crystallization experiments using nanoliter-volume protein crystallization droplets may produce equal or better quality protein crystals compared with those grown using microliter volumes, and sometimes produce crystals in nanoliter volumes when microliter volumes are unable to produce diffraction-quality crystals. Computations and numerical modelling studies were performed to compare the influence of solutal convective disturbances around growing crystals and different drop volumes. These studies suggest that both crystal size and drop size contribute to a marked reduction in diffuso-convective disturbances in nanoliter drops and thus to the observed quality enhancements.