Protein Condensation : Kinetic Pathways to Crystallization and Disease

For an interdisciplinary graduate and academic audience, this book describes protein crystallization from solution. The first part explains the production of high quality protein crystals, which is necessary to understand protein structure and function. The second part concerns the aggregation of proteins in undesirable ways, which can cause disease.

The quest to understand the condensation of proteins from solutions is a rapidly evolving field. The purpose of this book is to bring to an interdisciplinary audience the state-of-the-art in current research. The first part of the book deals with issues related to the production of high quality protein crystals from solution. Since protein function is determined by structure, high quality protein crystals must be grown in order to determine their structure by X-ray crystallography. The book also discusses diseases that occur due to undesired protein condensation, an increasingly important subject. Examples include sickle cell anemia, cataracts and Alzheimer''s disease. Current experimental and theoretical work on these diseases is discussed, which seeks understanding at a fundamental, molecular level, to prevent the undesired condensation from occurring. The book, containing color plate sections, is suitable for graduate students and academic researchers in physics, chemistry, structural biology, protein crystallography and medicine.