New Crystal-Growing Process Speeds Genetic Research

Scientists have developed a new process that reduces the time needed to find the structure of a human protein from as much as a year to as little as one month. The results of their research were reported in the July 2002 issue of Biological Crystallography.

Developed by Dr. Jose Gavira and Dr. JuanMa Garcia-Ruiz at the University of Granada (Spain), the new process uses diffusion, working on an almost microscopic scale. Tiny capillary tubes filled with protein solutions are dipped into vials full of various solvents, heavy metals, and reagents. Where the solutions meet, they diffuse one into the other, like cream into coffee. As the solutions mix through the tube, they create an almost infinite range of relative concentrations to one another. When the solutions reach the mixture that is just right, a crystal will start to grow.

"It kind of self-selects the optimal conditions,” said Dr. Joseph Ng, an assistant biology professor at the University of Alabama (Huntsville, USA) and one of the researchers on the project. "It goes pretty quickly. Instead of doing hundreds of tests with hundreds of samples, we do it all in one tube.”

Until now, preparing crystals for testing has been a laborious and time-consuming process. A lot of the problems in determining structure arose from the damage caused by handling the crystals. With the new process, everything is done with the crystal inside the tube. This means there is no handling, and thus no damage. Moreover, it can be done in a few weeks instead of several months.




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Univ. of Alabama
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