New Protein Crystallization Device by PDMS: In Situ Structure Determination

Abstract

Crystallization is one of the rate-limiting steps in determining a protein structure by X-ray diffraction. The counter diffusion method may be the best experimental techniques for self-exploring a wide range of crystallization conditions and optimizing the condition simultaneously by a single experiment. Microfluidic technologies have been used for development of devices based on the method for high throughput protein crystallization. Although screening of protein crystallization by the nano-liter volume counter diffusion is more useful than conventional screening, crystals grown from nano-liter volume are generally insufficient in size for diffraction studies.We developed a new protein crystallization device called “MicroChip