PROTEIN CRYSTAL-GROWTH IN MICROGRAVITY

Protein crystal growth is quire important for the determination of pro tein structures which are essential to the understanding of life at mo lecular level as well as to the development of molecular biotechnology . The microgravity environment of space is an ideal place to study the complicated protein crystallization and to grow good-quality protein crystals. A number of crystal-growth experiments of 10 different prote ins wire carried out in August, 1992 on the Chinese re-entry satellite FSW-2 in space using a tube crystallization equipment made in China. A total of 25 samples from 6 proteins produced crystals, and the effec ts of microgravity on protein crystal growth were observed, especially for an acidic phospholipase A2 and henegg-white lysozyme which gave b etter crystals in space than earth-grown crystals in ground control ex periments. The results have shown that the microgravity in space favor s the improvement of the size, perfection, morphology and internal ord er of the grown protein crytals.