Promotion of Large Protein Crystal Growth with Stirring Solution

We propose a protein crystal growth with stirring the solution, which is entirely different approach compared with the conventional method. The novel method, which we call the Floating And Stirring Technique (FAST), enables both growing crystals on an insoluble and very dense liquid without contacting the vessel and stirring the protein solution mildly. Using this method together with slow cooling, we obtained a 3.0 mm-long lysozyme crystal in 20 days from a seed crystal. This is larger than the 2.0 mm-long crystal grown without stirring. Stirring the protein solution accelerates the growth of the protein crystal and prevents additional spontaneous nucleation.