Direct Crystallization of Proteins from Impure Sources

Yue Liu, Hai Hou, Jin Li, Qing Di Cheng, Xi Zhang, Xiang Bin Zeng, Ahmad Fiaz, Bo Wang, Chen Yan Zhang, Qin Qin Lu, Da Chuan Yin

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

18 Scopus citations

Abstract

In recent years, with the rapidly increasing demand for pure protein products in various fields (biomedicines, biochemical reagents, food industries, etc.), the need for low-cost, high-quality protein purification technology has become urgent. Under this background, the traditional purification technology, protein crystallization, comes back to people's attention. Protein crystallization has the ability to obtain high-quality protein products at a low cost. Nevertheless, protein crystallization itself is challenging; for a long time, the industrial purification of proteins often has used chromatography-based approaches. In the field of structural biology, the strong demand for protein crystals has led to the full development of protein crystallization technology. To date, these technologies may have the potential to provide solutions to achieve crystallization of proteins at the industrial scale. In this paper, we report our effort to screen the crystallization conditions of four sample proteins (lysozyme, hemoglobin, superoxide dismutase, and homoserine oxygen-acetyltransferase) from different impure sources (natural and recombined ones). It was confirmed that crystallization screening technology allows protein crystals to be obtained directly from impure protein sources, showing that, from the impure sources, the target protein can be purified directly by crystallization without prior purification using chromatographic processes. This work demonstrated that the new technologies developed in the field of protein crystallization methodologies can be well applied in solving problems in traditional purification technology.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1694-1705
Number of pages12
JournalCrystal Growth and Design
Volume20
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 4 Mar 2020

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Direct Crystallization of Proteins from Impure Sources'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this