Microfluidics: From crystallization to serial time-resolved crystallography

Abstract

Capturing protein structural dynamics in real-time has tremendous potential in elucidating biological functions and providing information for structure-based drug design. While time-resolved structure determination has long been considered inaccessible for a vast majority of protein targets, serial methods for crystallography have remarkable potential in facilitating such analyses. Here, we review the impact of microfluidic technologies on protein crystal growth and X-ray diffraction analysis. In particular, we focus on applications of microfluidics for use in serial crystallography experiments for the time-resolved determination of protein structural dynamics.