Single-crystal – oriented-crystal – and epitaxy growth processes; – Processes of growth from liquid or supercritical state – Having growth from a solution comprising a solvent which is...
Patent
1997-08-26
2000-09-12
Kunemund, Robert
Single-crystal, oriented-crystal, and epitaxy growth processes;
Processes of growth from liquid or supercritical state
Having growth from a solution comprising a solvent which is...
117925, 117927, 23295R, C30B 900
Patent
active
061172324
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to a method for positively controlling crystallization of organic compounds, and more particularly, it relates to a method for controlling crystallization of various biopolymers such as protein by employing a semiconductor substrate or the like whose valence electrons are controlled.
BACKGROUND TECHNIQUE
For understanding specific properties and functions in various types of biopolymers such as protein and complexes thereof, detailed steric structures thereof are indispensable information. From the basic biochemical viewpoint, for example, information on the three-dimensional structure of protein or the like serves as the basis for understanding the mechanism of function appearance in a biochemical system by an enzyme or hormone. Particularly in the fields of pharmaceutical science, genetic engineering and chemical engineering among industrial circles, the three-dimensional structure provides information indispensable for rational molecular design for facilitating drug design, protein engineering, biochemical synthesis and the like.
As a method of obtaining three-dimensional steric structural information of such biopolymers at atomic levels, X-ray crystal structural analysis is the most cogent and high-accuracy means at present. Analytic speeds are remarkably improving by rapid improvement of arithmetic processing speeds of computers in addition to reduction of measuring times and improvement of measuring accuracy due to recent hardware improvement of X-ray light sources.cndot.analyzers, and the three-dimensional structures are conceivably going to be clarified with the main stream of the X-ray crystallographic analysis also from now on.
In order to decide the three-dimensional structure of a biopolymer by X-ray crystal structural analysis, on the other hand, it is indispensable to crystallize the target substance after extraction.cndot.purification. At present, however, there is neither technique nor apparatus which can necessarily crystallize any substance when applied, and hence crystallization is progressed while repeating trial and error drawing on intuition and experience under the present circumstances. A search by an enormous number of experimental conditions is necessary for obtaining a crystal of a biopolymer, and crystal growth forms the main bottleneck in the field of the X-ray crystallographic analysis.
Crystallization of a biopolymer such as protein is basically adapted to perform a treatment of eliminating a solvent from water or an anhydrous solution containing the polymer thereby attaining a supersaturated state and growing a crystal, similarly to the case of a general low molecular weight compound such as inorganic salt. As typical methods therefor, there are (1) a batch method, (2) dialysis and (3) a gas-liquid correlation diffusion method, which are chosen in response to the type, the quantity, the properties etc. of a sample.
The batch method is a method of directly adding a precipitant eliminating hydration water to a solution containing a biopolymer for reducing the solubility of the biopolymer and converting the same to a solid phase. In this method, solid ammonium sulfate, for example, is frequently used. This method has such disadvantages that the same requires a large quantity of solution sample, fine adjustment of a salt concentration and pH is difficult, skill is required for the operation, and reproducibility is low. As shown in FIG. 45, for example, the dialysis, which is overcoming the disadvantages of the batch method, is a method of sealing a solution 52 containing a biopolymer in the interior of a dialytic tube 51 for continuously changing the pH etc. of a dialytic tube outer liquid 53 (e.g., a buffer solution) and making crystallization. According to this method, the salt concentrations of the inner and outer liquids and the pH difference are adjustable at arbitrary speeds, and hence the conditions for crystallization are easy to find out. As shown in FIG. 46, for example, the gas-liquid correlation diffusion method is a
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Champagne Donald L.
Kunemund Robert
Sumitomo Metal Industries Ltd.
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