Abstract
This work presents a micro osmotic screening system that grows protein crystals in hours while consuming only micrograms of samples. Throughout the crystallization process, water can be driven in or out of a protein solution (across a semi-permeable membrane) to adjust its concentrations as desired. With the bi-directional and adjustable flow control realized by osmosis, each protein sample can be screened for crystallization conditions over a highly extended range. In the prototype demonstration, 6 × 8 screening arrays having an overall size of 20 × 24 × 2.5 mm 3 were fabricated and characterized with crystallization experiments. In these experiments, crystallization conditions for four proteins, including lysozyme, catalase, thaumatin and xylanase, were identified within 2-6 h while consuming less than 20 νl of sample solution for each protein. Furthermore, it was also demonstrated that diffraction-quality crystals may be grown and harvested from the prototype system. As such, this osmotic system pioneers a new class of rapid screening schemes for high-throughput protein crystallization. © 2007 IOP Publishing Ltd.