This proposal addresses the design and development of dynamically controlled protein crystal growth payloads for Space Station application. The Space Station will afford the protein crystal growth community the unprecedented opportunity to grow crystals in a microgravity environment for extended periods of time and then retrieve them. This will add a new dimension to determining the structures of hard to crystallize proteins such as membrane-bound proteins. To take full advantage of this opportunity, the BioSpace International Dynamically Controlled Crystallization System will be used as the basis of a system that will conduct a series of crystallizations and screens over extended periods of time. During this time the system will be monitored and controlled by the researchers via a laptop and the internet. Each of these systems will be completely compatible with all the Refrigerator/Incubator systems currently planned for the Space Station. The Phase I effort will include the analysis of protein crystals grown in space and on the ground using the concept proposed for the Space Station. In addition to the diffractometry analysis that will be performed at the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory, there will be X-ray topographic analysis performed to determine the influence of microgravity and to analyze growth induced defects.
Potential Commercial Applications:Once fully developed and demonstrated, this system and its techniques will be a vital tool in growing crystals that can yield high resolution structural data for structure-based drug design and for government, industry and university macromolecular researchers. To those performing protein crystal growth on the Space Station, it will enable the crystal growing process for the species being studied to be optimized on the ground before using these costly and limited resources.
