A supersaturation wave of protein crystallization

A microgravity protein crystallization experiment is described in which the existence of a supersaturation wave traveling across a diffusion-reaction system is experimentally demonstrated for the first time. The self-organize d dynamics of the experimental setup were used to implement a crystallizati on technique able to search automatically through the crystallization param eter space for optimum nucleation and growth conditions. The crystals obtai ned by this automatic optimization produced the highest quality X-ray diffr action data ever collected from the model protein used in the experiment. ( C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.