Progresses on developing screening kits for protein crystallization

Screening of protein crystallization conditions remains the major limiting step for three-dimensional structure determination, therefore developing more efficient screening kits is essential. Up to now the methods used for designing the screening kits include the incomplete factorial design, the sparse matrix sampling and the systematic screening. Based on these three methods, researchers have developed a series of crystallization screening kits which are proved applicable in practical protein crystallization. The development in designing the screening kits and the applications of the screening kits since 20th century were reviewed, and the future prospect in this field was discussed.