Membrane proteins crystallized with microbatch

Light harvesting complex II from Rhodopseudomonas acidophila was crystallized by Gerry McDermott and Naomi Chayen at Imperial College 1993.  Crystals were slightly smaller than those from vapor diffusion, but the VD crystals were sometimes too big anyway.  Data was never collected from the microbatch crystals as they were not needed - the structure had already been determined.  Crystals were grown with salt only - no detergent or lipid was present.

"Cores" from photosystem II were crystallized by Ben Hankamer and Naomi Chayen at Imperial College, London in 1992.  These crystals diffracted very poorly.  Wells contained both detergent and lipid.  Showers of much smaller needles were produced by VD.  These crystals are shown below:

Photosystem I was crystallised by Rachel Nechushtai and Naomi at Imperial College in 1992, diffracted to 4.5A which was no better than the vapor diffusion trials. Other forms of crystals were obtained by microbatch which were not obtained by vapor diffusion but these also did not diffract any better. The trials contained detergents.

ATP Synthase was crystallized by John Walker et al. in 4 microlitre droplets under oil. Droplets contained PEG, salt etc. See Molecular Architecture of the Rotary Motor in ATP Synthase, Science, volume 286, 26 November 1999, pp1700 -1705.

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