Atomic-force-microscopy studies of phase separations in macromolecular systems

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) has been used to visualize events arising from the formation of intervening metastable phases at the surfaces of macromolecular crystals growing from solution. Crystals investigated were of the proteins canavalin, thaumatin, lipase, xylanase, and catalase, crystals of transfer RNA, and crystals of satellite tobacco mosaic virus. Two types of aggregates were observed. The first were small, linear and branched aggregates, perhaps fractile in structure. These were incorporated into growing crystals as impurities, and they produced defects of various kinds. The second aggregate form we infer to be liquid-protein droplets which were particularly evident in freshly mixed protein-precipitant solutions. Droplets, upon sedimentation, have two possible fates. In some cases they immediately restructured as crystalline multilayer stacks whose development was guided by and contiguous with the underlying lattice. These contributed to the ordered growth of the crystal by serving as sources of growth steps. In other cases, liquid-protein droplets formed distinct microcrystals, somehow discontinuous with the underlying lattice, and these were subsequently incorporated into the growing substrate crystal with the formation of defects. Scarring experiments with the AFM tip indicated that liquid-protein droplets with the potential to rapidly crystallize were a consequence of concentration instabilities near the crystal’s surfaces. The AFM study suggests that phase separation and the appearance of aggregates having limited order is a common occurrence in supersaturated macromolecular solutions such as the protein-precipitant solutions used for crystallization.