Study on Nucleation Kinetics of Lysozyme Crystallization

The nucleation kinetics of hen egg-white lysozyme crystallization was investigated using a hot stage cooling crystallizer and a microscope to monitor the solution crystallization process in real time. Images of crystals were continuously recorded under varied precipitant and protein concentrations. The nucleation rate was found to be higher at higher precipitant concentration, and increase monotonically with protein concentration if the precipitant concentration was held constant. Attempt was made to interpret the experimental data using classical nucleation theory. It was found that the model predictions are lower than the experimental values at low supersaturations but agree well with experimental data at high supersaturations. The trends in the experimental data suggest that two nucleation mechanisms might co-exist: heterogeneous nucleation seeming to be the dominant at low supersaturation while at higher supersaturation homogeneous nucleation seeming to play the major role.