A VERSATILE REACTOR FOR TEMPERATURE CONTROLLED CRYSTALLIZATION OF BIOLOGICAL MACROMOLECULES

Accurate control of crystallization conditions, and accordingly reproducibility of experiments, is often hampered by the lack of adequate instrumentation in the laboratory. A versatile and inexpensive crystallization reactor allowing crystal growth by vapor phase equilibration (sitting, hanging or sandwiched drops) or by the batch technique is described here. In this reactor, temperature is controlled accurately by a Peltier device and the crystallization process monitored by a time-lapse video recorder. An application for evaluating the growth kinetics of tetragonal lysozyme crystals as a function of temperature is given. It was observed that the apparent growth rate decreased when temperature was lowered, although under such conditions supersaturation was increased and crystals appeared sooner.