Protein crystallization

Proteins will solidify into crystals under certain conditions. These conditions are usually made up of salts, buffers, and precipitating agents. This is often the hardest step in x-ray crystallography. Hundreds of conditions varying the salts, pH, buffer, and precipitating agents are combined with the protein in order to crystallize the protein under the right conditions. This is done using 96 well plates; each well containing a different condition and crystals; which form over the course of days, weeks, or even months. The pictures below are crystals of APS Kinase D63N from Penicillium chrysogenum taken at the Chemistry building at UC Davis after crystals formed over a period of a week.

Figure 1: The experiment was originally proposed by Dr. Andy Fisher in the Structural Biology lab. Michelle Towles was a research assistant to Sean Gay and purified the protein and set up the crystal trays.