Protein crystallization in a magnetic field

The rapid advance in superconducting magnet technology enables more and more applications for the use of high magnetic fields in scientific researches and industrial manufacturing. These applications include material processing, separation, chemical reaction, nuclear fusion, high energy physics, and many more. Generally, a superconducting magnet provides both homogeneous and inhomogeneous magnetic fields simultaneously, and both can affect the samples in the field so that the magnetic field can be utilized for various purposes. A homogeneous or inhomogeneous magnetic field will exert a torque on suspending particles in a solution if the particles have anisotropic magnetic susceptibility, which will further influence the properties of the solution; in an inhomogeneous magnetic field, a repulsive force will act on a diamagnetic solution so that the levels of apparent or effective gravity of the solution can be tuned in a vertical magnetic field. These effects can be utilized to govern the physical and chemical processes in solution like crystallization. In recent years, high magnetic fields have been applied in protein crystallization. It was found that a magnetic field can align the crystals along the field direction, decrease the diffusivity of macromolecules in the solution, and increase the viscosity of the solution; a suitable inhomogeneous magnetic field can damp the natural convection substantially, which resembles the case in a space environment. Both homogeneous and inhomogeneous magnetic fields have been found to improve the quality of some protein crystals. These discoveries showed that the researches on protein crystallization in high magnetic field is potentially valuable, because obtaining high quality protein crystals is important for 3-dimensional structure determination of proteins using X ray crystallography. This paper will review the background and more recent progress and discuss the future perspectives in this research field.