Control of macromolecule distribution within synthetic and biogenic single calcite crystals

The ability of organisms to exercise control over crystal growth is wonderfully exemplified by skeleton formation in echinoderms. A sea urchin spine is a unique composite of a single crystal of calcite and glycoproteins intercalated inside the crystal during its growth. Here we performed a detailed morphological and high-resolution synchrotron X-ray diffraction study of the textures of synthetic and biogenic calcite crystals. We show that the intracrystalline macromolecules from sea urchin spines, when allowed to interact with growing calcite crystals in vitro, selectively reduce the coherence lengths and degrees of alignment of the perfect domains in specific crystallographic directions. These directions also correspond to the newly-developed stable faces. In contrast, the defect distribution of young sea urchin spines composed entirely of spongy stereomic structure is much more isotropic. In mature spines containing secondarily filled-in wedges of calcite, the degree of anisotropy is intermediate between that of the synthetic crystals and the young spines. The macromolecules extracted from young and mature spines are, however, very similar. These observations demonstrate the inherent capability of occluded matrix macromolecules to finely differentiate between crystal planes by stereochemical recognition processes. They also show that in biologically-produced calcite crystals this process can be overridden to produce a more isotropic material.