GRANADA CRYSTALLISATION FACILITY (GCF)
Research Area: Macromolecular Crystal Growth
Expedition(s): 3, 5, 6-10, 12, 14- 17
Principal Investigator(s): ● Juan Manuel Garcia-Ruiz, PhD University of Granada,
Granada, Spain
RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
The Granada Crystallisation Facility
(GCF) experiment concerns the
crystallization of proteins in space by
the counter-diffusion technique. The
major objective is to produce a detailed
analysis and quantitative interpretation
of the relationship between the quality
of the crystals and the environment in
which they were produced. The
secondary objective of the project is to
compare identical experiments
performed in space with free protein
solutions on one hand, and on the
ground in gelled protein solutions on
the other hand.RESULTS
Most of the molecules did crystallize,
both in space and on the ground and
correspond to those molecules in which
crystallization conditions were
adequately optimized. Owing to the
very short time available to prepare this project, the optimal crystallization conditions could not
be found for some molecules, and they did not crystallize, either in space or on ground.
Both on ground and microgravity grown crystals showed very good I/sigma(I) values for the
crystallographic analysis performed postflight. For the model proteins, the values were
comparable to the best obtained by other techniques.
An analysis of the slight differences in crystal quality in terms of I/sigma(I) as a function of the
resolution revealed the inexistence of a clear and consistent pattern that led to conclude which
environment yields the best crystals. The effect of redundancy on I/sigma(I) was clearly
observed in the thaumatin: data sets collected at room temperature from crystals grown in
space with gel, without gel, and on ground share similar multiplicity and yield similar crystal
quality in terms of I/sigma(I). Interestingly, the differences in crystal quality that appeared
between the data sets collected at 100 Kelvin and their counterpart collected at room
temperature can be correlated with differences in redundancy.
Example of proteins crystallized in the Andromede mission a)
Lysozyme; b) Dehydroquinase; c,e) Thaumatin; d) Concanavalin
A; f,k,n) Anti lysozyme camel antibody; g) Insulin; h) Lumazine
synthase; i) Catalase; j,o) Factor XII; l) Saicar synthase; m)
Ferritin. LEC, Granada, Spain images.