In general, I would say the main problem with micro-g protein
crystallization is that its benefits obviously depend on the
inhibition of convection. The problem with this is that the very same
effect can be achived by crystallization in a gel matrix - With a
ridiculously low fraction of the costs.
Clemens
Zitat von Jack Reynolds <jdr7...@yahoo.com>:
TITLE: "Extracting trends from two decades of microgravity
macromolecular crystallization history" (2005) (Judge, Snell and van
der Woerd).
"Significant enhancements in structural knowledge have resulted from
X-ray diffraction of the crystals grown . . . in the reduced
acceleration environnments of an orbiting spacecraft."
TITLE: "Macromolecular Crystallization in Microgravity Generated by
a Superconducting Magnet" (2006) (Wakayama, Yin, Harata, Kiyoshi,
Fujiwara and Tanimoto).
"About 30% of the protein crystals grown in space yield better X-ray
diffraction data than the best crystals grown on the earth."
TITLE: "The crystallization of biological macromolecules under
microgravity: a way to more accurate three-dimensional structures?"
(2002) (Lorber).
"The crystallization of proteins . . . in a microgravity environment
can produce crystals having lesser defects than crystals prepared
under normal gravity on earth. Such microgravity-grown crystals can
diffract X-rays to a higher resolution and have a lower mosaic
spread."
TITLE: "Protein crystal growth on board Shenzhou 3: a concerted
effort improves crystal diffraction quality and facilitates
structure determination." (2004) (Han, Cang, Zhou, Wang, Bi,
Colelesage, Delbaere, Nahoum, Shi, Zhou, Zhue and Lin)
". . . careful and concerted planning at all stages made it possible
to obtain crystals of improved quality compared to their ground
controls for some of the proteins. Significantly improved
resolutions were obtained from diffracted crystals of 4 proteins. A
complete data set from a space crystal of the PEP carboxykinase
yielded significantly higher resolution, and a lower average
temperature factor than the best ground-based control crystal."
TITLE: "JAXA-GCF project - High-quality protein crystals grown under
microgravity environment for better understand of protein
structure." (2006). (Sato, Tanaka, Inaka, Shinozaki, Yamanaka,
Takahashi, Yamanaka, Hirota, Sugiyama, Kato, Saito, Sano, Motohara,
Nakamura, Kobayashi, and Yoshitomi.)
"JAXA has developed technologies for growing, in microgravity,
high-quality protein crystals, which may diffract up to atomic
resolution, for a better understanding of 3-dimensional rpotein
structures through X-ray diffraction experiments."
TITLE: "A Comparison between Simulations and Experiments for
Microgravity Crystal Growth in Gradient Magnetic Fields." (2008).
(Poodt, et al.).
"Microgravity protein crystal growth is expected to lead to an
improvement of protein crystal quality, compared to crystals grown
under normal gravity, due to the suppression of buoyancy driven
convection. This is highly relevant, because for protein structure
determination by X-ray diffraction, protein crystallization is often
the quality limiting step."
TITLE: "Macromolecular crystallization in microgravity." (2005)
(Snell and Helliwell).
"Density difference fluid flows and sedimentation of growing
crystals are greatly reduced when crystallization takes place in a
reduced gravity environment."
TITLE: "Comparison of space- and ground-grown Bi2Se.21Te2.79
thermoelectric crystals." (2010). (Zhou, et al.)
"The compositions of the space crystal grown along growth direction
were more homogeneous than that of the ground crystal grown. The
crystallization of space crystal grown was obviously improved."
That's just a handful of quotes from a few of the sources I have
accumulated over the last few months. I guess this all boils down to
your definition of "significantly improved crystals."
Is there something wrong with these sources? Am I misunderstanding
their findings?
Jack
--- On Sun, 5/9/10, Dunten, Pete W. <p...@slac.stanford.edu> wrote:
"significantly improved crystals " I
wasn't aware that was an accepted generalization, born out
by the experiments already conducted.
Can you cite a number of cases?
Another issue for pharma would be the timeline.
Chemistry programs move pretty fast, and if the xray
crystallographers don't keep up,
they aren't very useful.
Pete
________________________________________
From: CCP4 bulletin board [ccp...@jiscmail.ac.uk]
On Behalf Of Jack Reynolds [jdr7...@yahoo.com]
Sent: Sunday, May 09, 2010 11:26 AM
To: CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: [ccp4bb] Clarification and another question . . .
--- On Sun, 5/9/10, Klaus Fütterer <k.futte...@bham.ac.uk>
wrote:
> Dear Jack,
>
> I believe your venture would enter a mature market,
and, if
> you were to offer growing growing crystals in
microgravity,
> a market characterised by very high costs and
(presumably)
> very low margins.
I wouldn't offer crystal growth, I would offer access to
the data from x-ray diffraction of space-grown crystals. Is
the data from significantly improved crystals not a valuable
commodity?
If the pharmaceutical industry (and other researchers, for
that matter) could grow crystals in space, and extract
critical data from the x-ray diffraction of these
space-grown crystals (in space); AND
if costs could be reduced by 30-50%; AND
if the end-product is the data, not the crystals . . .
do you still think (profit) margins would be nominal?
Is your assessment of "very low margins" based on assumed
"very high costs?"
Jack
--------------------------------------------------
Dr. Clemens Grimm
Institut für Biochemie
Biozentrum der Universität Würzburg
Am Hubland
D-97074 Würzburg
Germany
e-mail: clemens.gr...@biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de
phone : +49 0931 888 84031
-------------------------------------------------
