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Controlling Protein Crystal Nucleation by Droplet‐Based Microfluidics
Author(s) -
Maeki Masatoshi,
Teshima Yuki,
Yoshizuka Saori,
Yamaguchi Hiroshi,
Yamashita Kenichi,
Miyazaki Masaya
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
chemistry – a european journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.687
H-Index - 242
eISSN - 1521-3765
pISSN - 0947-6539
DOI - 10.1002/chem.201303270
Subject(s) - crystallization , protein crystallization , nucleation , thaumatin , microfluidics , supersaturation , materials science , diffusion , lysozyme , crystal (programming language) , crystallography , chemical physics , chemistry , nanotechnology , biochemistry , thermodynamics , organic chemistry , computer science , gene , programming language , physics
Herein, we demonstrate the potential of droplet‐based microfluidics for controlling protein crystallization and generating single‐protein crystals. We estimated the critical droplet size for obtaining a single crystal within a microdroplet and investigated the crystallization of four model proteins to confirm the effect of protein molecular diffusion on crystallization. A single crystal was obtained in microdroplets smaller than the critical size by using droplet‐based microfluidics. In the case of thaumatin crystallization, a single thaumatin crystal was obtained in a 200 μm droplet even with high supersaturation. In the case of ferritin crystallization, the nucleation profile of ferritin crystals had a wider distribution than the nucleation profiles of lysozyme, thaumatin, and glucose isomerase crystallization. We found that the droplet‐based microfluidic approach was able to control the nucleation of a protein by providing control over the crystallization conditions and the droplet size, and that the diffusion of protein molecules is a significant factor in controlling the nucleation of protein crystals in droplet‐based microfluidics.