Tanaka Shinpei, Ataka Mitsuo, Ito Kohzo
Special Division for Human Life Technology, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (Kansai), 1-8-31 Midorigaoka, Ikeda 563-8577, Japan.
Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2002 May;65(5 Pt 1):051804. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.65.051804. Epub 2002 May 22.
We observed interesting structures during phase transformations of lysozyme solutions. The process begins with the separation of a protein-rich liquid phase in the form of droplets. The droplets fall to the bottom of the chamber in a few minutes, and on the scale of an hour they begin to merge, forming an interconnected spongelike structure. In the final transformation process, the sponge turns into crystals. The existence of the sponge phase depends upon the relative time scales for droplet coalescence and crystal nucleation, something we were able to vary by changing the salt concentration in our solution. We expect our observations to have significance for producing protein crystals for x-ray structure analysis of proteins.
我们在溶菌酶溶液的相变过程中观察到了有趣的结构。该过程始于以液滴形式分离出富含蛋白质的液相。液滴在几分钟内落到腔室底部，在一小时的时间尺度上它们开始合并，形成相互连接的海绵状结构。在最终的转变过程中，海绵状结构转变为晶体。海绵相的存在取决于液滴聚结和晶体成核的相对时间尺度，我们能够通过改变溶液中的盐浓度来改变这一尺度。我们期望我们的观察结果对于生产用于蛋白质X射线结构分析的蛋白质晶体具有重要意义。
