In meso Approaches to Membrane Protein Crystallization - Molecules: Nucleation, Aggregation and Crystallization - page 259

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In mesoApproaches to Membrane
Protein Crystallization
Valentin I. Gordeliy* ,† and Ekaterina S. Moiseeva †
Crystallization of membrane proteins remains a major challenge in modern
structural biology. At issue is the amphiphathic character of these proteins and
that the natural environment of these proteins is a lipid bilayer. This chapter
describes different techniques of membrane protein crystallization focusing on a
fascinating recent breakthrough in the field: methods of crystallization in the
detergent-lipid environment ( in meso methods).
Keywords: Membrane proteins; lipid bilayer; detergents; crystallization
in meso ; vesicles; bicelles.
Introduction
Structural information is the basis of our knowledge about matter, inde-
pendently of whether we deal with elementary particles which are of inter-
est to high energy physics, or atoms, or biological macromolecules of which
living organisms are comprised.
Deciphering of the double helix structure of deoxyribonucleic acid
(DNA) in 1953 revolutionized biology (Watson, Crick, 1953a; Watson,
Crick, 1953b). Another important result was resolving the structure of the
first proteins. High concentrations of myoglobin in muscle cells allow
*Corresponding author.
† Institute of Structural Biology J.P. Ebel, Grenoble, France; Institute of Neurosciences and
Biophysics 2, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany; Centre of Biophysics
and Physical Chemistry of Supramolecular Structures of Moscow Institute of Physics and
Technology, Moscow, Russia. E-mail: [e-mail]