First-Class Protein
Crystals Thanks To Weightlessness On Earth
(23 April 2008) Dutch chemist Paul
Poodt has developed two attractive alternatives for allowing protein crystals
to grow under weightless conditions.
If the crystals are grown
upside down in a strong magnetic field, fluid flows that disrupt crystal growth
are suppressed. Therefore, high-quality proteins no longer need to be grown in
space, but can be grown here on earth.
Protein crystals provide vital
knowledge for drug development. The production of an effective drug requires
knowledge of how biomolecules such as body proteins are constructed. If you
want to know how proteins work, you must first determine their molecular
structure using X-ray diffraction. This requires exceptionally high-quality
protein crystals. However, allowing these to grow can be extremely difficult
and sometimes even impossible: the presence of gravity gives rise to fluid
flows in the crystal solution, which, in turn, disrupt the growth process.
Undisturbed growth yields the finest crystals.
Space
crystals
In order to prevent fluid flows, the decision is often
taken to grow the protein crystals in space on, for example, the International
Space Station ISS. However, as this is a very expensive and time-consuming
undertaking, scientists are looking for methods to create weightlessness on
earth. The experiment in Nijmegen is the first in the world to demonstrate that
a crystal can grow uniformly in a strong magnetic field.
Paul Poodt
(Zevenaar, 1979) studied physical chemistry. His PhD research - supported by
the Open Competition of NWO Chemical Sciences - is part of the programme of the
Institute for Molecules and Material (IMM) of the Radboud University Nijmegen.
He is currently employed at TNO.
(source: Netherlands Organization for
Scientific Research)
