Protein Crystal Growth in Microgravity

【摘要】 <正> Protein crystal growth is quite important for the determination of protein structureswhich are essential to the understanding of life at molecular level as well as to the development of molecu-lar biotechnology.The microgravity environment of space is an ideal place to study the complicated pro-tein crystallization and to grow good-quality protein crystals.A number of crystal-growth experiments of10 different proteins were carried out in August,1992 on the Chinese re-entry satellite FSW-2 in spaceusing a tube crystallization equipment made in China.A total of 25 samples from 6 proteins producedcrystals,and the effects of microgravity on protein crystal growth were observed,especially for an acidicphospholipase A2 and henegg-white lysozyme which gave better crystals in space than earth-grown crys-tals in ground control experiments.The results have shown that the microgravity in space favors the im-provement of the size,perfection,morphology and internal order of the grown protein crytals.更多还原

【Abstract】 Protein crystal growth is quite important for the determination of protein structures which are essential to the understanding of life at molecular level as well as to the development of molecu- lar biotechnology.The microgravity environment of space is an ideal place to study the complicated pro- tein crystallization and to grow good-quality protein crystals.A number of crystal-growth experiments of 10 different proteins were carried out in August,1992 on the Chinese re-entry satellite FSW-2 in space using a tube crystallization equipment made in China.A total of 25 samples from 6 proteins produced crystals,and the effects of microgravity on protein crystal growth were observed,especially for an acidic phospholipase A2 and henegg-white lysozyme which gave better crystals in space than earth-grown crys- tals in ground control experiments.The results have shown that the microgravity in space favors the im- provement of the size,perfection,morphology and internal order of the grown protein crytals.更多还原