A cryocooling technique for protein crystals grown by dialysis from volatile solvents

The transfer of protein crystals from the original crystallization environment to cryoprotectants, heavy‐atom solutions, or quartz capillary tubes, exposes crystal droplets to conditions that can cause evaporation of the droplet and damage to the crystal. This problem is particularly acute for cryst...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of applied crystallography 2000-02, Vol.33 (1), p.168-171
Main Authors: Fernandez, Elias J., Joachimiak, Andrzej, Lolis, Elias
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Crystalline structure
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Molecular biophysics
Structure in molecular biology
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Summary:The transfer of protein crystals from the original crystallization environment to cryoprotectants, heavy‐atom solutions, or quartz capillary tubes, exposes crystal droplets to conditions that can cause evaporation of the droplet and damage to the crystal. This problem is particularly acute for crystals grown from volatile solvents or that are otherwise air‐sensitive. Here a method that overcomes this problem is applied to crystals of macrophage inflammatory protein II encoded by herpesvirus‐8. The method is based on dialysis and makes use of a dialysis adaptor that can be used with 24‐well crystallization plates. This method permits the transfer of crystals to cryoprotectant conditions with greater ease and lowers the risk of mechanical damage relative to other available methods.
ISSN:1600-5767
0021-8898
1600-5767
DOI:10.1107/S0021889899012406