High-quality Protein Crystal Growth under Space Environment

Abstract

Protein crystallization experiment in space has been performed for more than 20 years. Although microgravity was expected to affect crystallization process to from crystals of better quality, it could not meet the expectation of the contribution to structural biology. JAXA has started ‘JAXA-GCF project’ for protein crystallization experiment in space since 2002. In the project, we performed crystallization experiments of Alpha-Amylase, Lysozyme and other important proteins in space and obtained crystals of very high quality. We introduce this unique project, our recent result, and future aspects.