Govada, L;
Leese, HS;
Saridakis, E;
Kassen, S;
Chain, B;
Khurshid, S;
Menzel, R;
... Chayen, NE; + view all
(2016)
Exploring Carbon Nanomaterial Diversity for Nucleation of Protein Crystals.
Scientific Reports
, 6
, Article 20053. 10.1038/srep20053.
Text
Chain_Exploring Carbon Nanomaterial Diversity for Nucleation of Protein Crystals.pdf - Published Version Download (1MB) |
Abstract
Controlling crystal nucleation is a crucial step in obtaining high quality protein crystals for structure determination by X-ray crystallography. Carbon nanomaterials (CNMs) including carbon nanotubes, graphene oxide, and carbon black provide a range of surface topographies, porosities and length scales; functionalisation with two different approaches, gas phase radical grafting and liquid phase reductive grafting, provide routes to a range of oligomer functionalised products. These grafted materials, combined with a range of controls, were used in a large-scale assessment of the effectiveness for protein crystal nucleation of 20 different carbon nanomaterials on five proteins. This study has allowed a direct comparison of the key characteristics of carbon-based nucleants: appropriate surface chemistry, porosity and/or roughness are required. The most effective solid system tested in this study, carbon black nanoparticles functionalised with poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether of mean molecular weight 5000, provides a novel highly effective nucleant, that was able to induce crystal nucleation of four out of the five proteins tested at metastable conditions.
Type: | Article |
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Title: | Exploring Carbon Nanomaterial Diversity for Nucleation of Protein Crystals |
Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
DOI: | 10.1038/srep20053 |
Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep20053 |
Language: | English |
Additional information: | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
Keywords: | Minimal framework damage, heterogeneous nucleation, graphene oxide, crystallization, nanotubes, surfaces, growth, yield, stability, chemistry |
UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences > Div of Infection and Immunity |
URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1483627 |
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