Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: The effect of metal surfaces on the crystallization of lysozyme using the Metal-Assisted and Microwave-Accelerated Evaporative Crystallization (MA-MAEC) technique and a monomode microwave system is described.Our microwave system (is called the iCrystal system hereafter for brevity) is comprised of a 100 W variable power monomode microwave source, a monomode cavity, fiber optic temperature probes and digital cameras.Crystallization of lysozyme (a model protein) was conducted using the iCrystal system on four different types of circular crystallization plates with 21-well sample capacity (i.e., crystallization plates): (i) blank: a continuous surface without a metal, (ii) silver nanoparticle films (SNFs): a discontinuous metal film, (iii) iron nano-columns: a semicontinuous metal film, and (iv) indium tin oxide (ITO): a continuous metal film.Lysozyme crystals grown on all crystallization plates were characterized by X-ray crystallography and found to be X-ray diffraction quality.The use of iron nano-columns afforded for the growth of largest number of lysozyme crystals with a narrow size distribution.ITO-modified crystallization plates were deemed to be best of all the crystallization plates based on the observations that lysozyme crystals were grown at the shortest time (370 ± 36 minutes) with a narrow size distribution up to 460 m in size.
Source: Nano Biomedicine and Engineering
Language: English
Subfield: Materials Chemistry
Field: Materials Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2469120423