Abstract
High resolution microscopies have successfully been applied to reveal monomolecular growth steps of protein crystals during crystal growth, the method of which has also been applied to reveal defects in the protein crystals by slight etching to find the mutual relation between growth centers and defects. Dislocations with hollow cores were found to be responsible for the formation of giant spiral hillocks. While, a large numbers of microdefects revealed as shallow etch pits were found to promote 2D nucleation growth on the lysozyme crystals because of the linear relationship between the density of the shallow etch pits and the 2D islands.
