sbir/sttr phase i: Nanoengineered Epitaxial Surfaces for High Throughput Protein Crystallization

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project proposes to develop a new type of nanoengineered surface to epitaxially nucleate protein crystals. These surfaces should greatly accelerate most high throughput Structural Genomics efforts. The basic concept for the epitaxial surfaces is to prepare a surface that possesses chemical modulations commensurate in size and periodicity to protein unit cells. It is speculated that exposure of the protein growth solution to certain compositional periodicities (5-100 nm) on the surface of the heterogeneous nucleants induces an ordered layer of sorbed protein molecules which form the incipient nucleus of the protein crystal. Since for a given unknown protein the unit cell is not known in advance, the heterogeneous nucleants are prepared as a combinatorial library in a chip based format, with a wide variety of modulations per unit chip area. In this Phase I proposal, methods and techniques will be developed to allow a more efficient survey of surfaces and proteins with the goal of better defining the role of the surfaces in inducing nucleation. The commercial applications of this project are in the area of biological research and in drug discovery and development.