Biomedical subjects

Christo N Nanev

Publications and source records attributed to Christo N Nanev.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Hypergravity as a crystallization tool.

The centrifugal increase of concentration is nondestructive, rapid, and simple technology. Therefore it is used to create a higher supersaturation that is required for crystal nucleation, as the one that is appropriate for the subsequent growth. Crystal nucleation is evoked in glass capillary tubes filled with protein solutions. The couple ferritin/ apoferritin is used as model proteins in the present article. Although differing in their masses the two (quasi) spherical molecules have exactly the same size and surface properties. Together with the temperature-independent solubility this makes them very convenient for our investigations. Decoupling nucleation and growth, for example, by means of hypergravity makes it possible to grow quasi-equidimensional crystals. The use of monodisperse crystalline forms of therapeutic agents can ensure constant time-release of protein-based medications.

Animals↗

PubMed2006

Is crystal growth under low supersaturations influenced by a tendency to a minimum of the surface-free energy?

The long-standing problem of face morphology is discussed. Special emphasis is put on macroscopically flat faces, whose growth, under low supersaturations, is driven by dislocations possessing some screw component. The most general case, where the crystal face is pierced by more than one screw dislocation, is considered. If performed under sufficiently low supersaturation, the growth leads to the formation of the face morphology corresponding to the minimum of the surface-free energy. The thermodynamic driving force for face flattening is the difference in the surface-free energy of the vicinal faces of the hillocks (emanating from screw dislocations) and that of a singular face, which can truncate the valley between the growth hillocks. The hillock slope gives the quantitative relation between energetics and kinetics. The result of the considerations is that the lower the supersaturation, the more important is the role of the surface-free energy in face flattening. Another factor, particularly under sufficiently low supersaturations, is the effective increase in the local supersaturation at the valley separating two growth hillocks. The reason is that the dislocation strain energy vanishes there. (This is most evident when two dislocations of opposite sign are considered.) Besides, the valley floors are concave regions on the crystal surface, where the building blocks are bound more strongly. Thus, the kinetic reason for face flattening is the relative preference for incorporation of atoms, arriving from the ambient phase, at the valley floor. Note that accelerated step annihilation in the valley floor should be a universal factor, which favors face flattening under any supersaturation. The amount of flattening in the growth situation is determined by the interplay between supersaturation and thermodynamics.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2004

Effects of buoyancy-driven convection on nucleation and growth of protein crystals.

Protein crystallization has been studied in presence or absence of buoyancy-driven convection. Gravity-driven flow was created, or suppressed, in protein solutions by means of vertically directed density gradients that were caused by generating suitable temperature gradients. The presence of enhanced mixing was demonstrated directly by experiments with crustacyanin, a blue-colored protein, and other materials. Combined with the vertical tube position the enhanced convection has two main effects. First, it reduces the number of nucleated hen-egg-white lysozyme (HEWL) crystals, as compared with those in a horizontal capillary. By enabling better nutrition from the protein in the solution, convection results in growth of fewer larger HEWL crystals. Second, we observe that due to convection, trypsin crystals grow faster. Suppression of convection, achieved by decreasing solution density upward in the capillary, can to some extent mimic conditions of growth in microgravity. Thus, impurity supply, which may have a detrimental effect on crystal quality, was avoided.

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