Perfect Crystals: microgravity capillary counterdiffusion crystallization of human manganese superoxide dismutase for neutron crystallography.

ABSTRACT: The NASA mission Perfect Crystals used the microgravity environment on the International Space Station (ISS) to grow crystals of human manganese superoxide dismutase (MnSOD)-an oxidoreductase critical for mitochondrial vitality and human health. The mission's overarching aim is to perform neutron protein crystallography (NPC) on MnSOD to directly visualize proton positions and derive a chemical understanding of the concerted proton electron transfers performed by the enzyme. Large crystals that are perfect enough to diffract neutrons to sufficient resolution are essential for NPC. This combination, large and perfect, is hard to achieve on Earth due to gravity-induced convective mixing. Capillary counterdiffusion methods were developed that provided a gradient of conditions for crystal grow

SUBMITTER: Lutz WE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10238240 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature