Small and macromolecules crystallization induced by focused ultrafast laser

Abstract

The structure based drug design has been limited by various factors that include protein crystallization, which is one of the most challenging tasks in this area. It has been proved unequivocally that X-ray crystallography is highly trusted technique for three dimensional structure determination of small- and macro-molecules. It has provided the definite solution for several key areas such as structure based drug design, site directed mutagenesis and elucidation of enzyme mechanisms. In X-ray crystallography, growing good quality of crystals for structure determination is always, the rate limiting step. Various approaches including laser induced crystallization technique has been reported to tackle this issue. We report on the crystallization of small- and macro-molecules under focused optical radiation from a femtosecond laser (λ = 800 nm). The efficacy of this technique is proved by crystallizing different samples such as sodium chloride and urea, and by comparing the results to those crystals obtained by conventional methods. In addition, the unique capability of the developed technique is demonstrated by crystallizing the three chalcone compounds that are difficult to crystallize using conventional methods. Furthermore, the developed technique is extended to crystallize protein molecule (lysozyme) and the results indicate that present technique is a potential alternative tool to crystallize biomolecules.