An electric field was applied to a conductive layer to induce Joule heating in order to generate the intense heat needed to carry out the crystallization of amorphous silicon. Complete crystallization was observed via Joule heating under typical processing conditions. Crystallization was accomplished throughout the sample within the range of microseconds of the heating, thus demonstrating the p...

Many bioscience fields employ high-throughput methods to screen multiple biochemical conditions. The analysis of these becomes tedious without a degree of automation. Crystallization, a rate limiting step in biological X-ray crystallography, is one of these fields. Screening of multiple potential crystallization conditions (cocktails) is the most effective method of probing a proteins phase dia...

The Marseille Protein Crystallization Database (MPCD) is a new crystallization database, freely accessible via http://www.crmcn.univ-mrs.fr/mpcd/, populated with information found in the BMCD and CYCLOP. This new online database includes details about macromolecules (such as name, pI, molecular weight, number of subunits), crystallization conditions, methods and additives used in an easy-to-com...

Protein crystallization is a major bottleneck in determining tertiary protein structures from genomic sequence data. This paper describes a microfluidic system for screening hundreds of protein crystallization conditions using less than 4 nL of protein solution for each crystallization droplet. The droplets are formed by mixing protein, precipitant, and additive stock solutions in variable rati...

Elucidating and clarifying the function of membrane proteins ultimately requires atomic resolution structures as determined most commonly by X-ray crystallography. Many high impact membrane protein structures have resulted from advanced techniques such as in meso crystallization that present technical difficulties for the set-up and scale-out of high-throughput crystallization experiments. In p...

clinopyroxene phenocrysts and microphenocrysts in potassic and sodic eosen alkaline volcanic rocks from the northern lahrud (nw iran) record various stages in the crystallization and evolution history of the alkaline melt as well as its origin. the rock series hosting the clinopyroxene phenocrysts is phonolitic tephrite and tephritic phonolite composition. theses rocks generally show porphyriti...

Identifying and then optimizing initial crystallization conditions is a prerequisite for macromolecular structure determination by crystallography. Improved technologies enable data collection on crystals that are difficult if not impossible to detect using visible imaging. The application of second-order nonlinear imaging of chiral crystals and ultraviolet two-photon excited fluorescence detec...

Protein crystallization conditions that resulted in crystal structures published by scientists at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC-LMB, Cambridge, UK) have been analysed. It was observed that the more often a crystallization reagent had been used to formulate the initial conditions, the more often it was found in the reported conditions that yielded diffraction quality crystals. The...

X-ray crystallography is the predominant method for obtaining atomic-scale information about biological macromolecules. Despite the success of the technique, obtaining well diffracting crystals still critically limits going from protein to structure. In practice, the crystallization process proceeds through knowledge-informed empiricism. Better physico-chemical understanding remains elusive bec...

Advances in automation have facilitated the widespread adoption of high-throughput vapour-diffusion methods for initial crystallization screening. However, for many proteins, screening thousands of crystallization conditions fails to yield crystals of sufficient quality for structural characterization. Here, the rates of crystal identification for thaumatin, catalase and myoglobin using microfl...