Journal:IUCrJ:S2052252519005761
From Proteopedia
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<b>Molecular Tour</b><br> | <b>Molecular Tour</b><br> | ||
| + | Martensitic transformations are the first-order crystal-to-crystal phase transitions that occur mostly in materials such as steel, alloys and ceramics, but are rare in molecular crystals and have not been detected in protein crystals. | ||
| + | We discovered that crystals of a reversibly switchable fluorescent protein Tetdron can undergo the martensitic transformation by illumination with 400 nm light at room temperature. The phase transition results in the protein in crystallo tetramerization coupled to the chromophore deprotonation and substantial changes in the crystal packing as demonstrated by X-ray photocrystallography and spectroscopic measurements. | ||
| + | The remarkable property of Tetdron crystals to undergo the photo-induced martensitic transformation can be explored to create novel martensitic biomaterials such as biomachines for biomedical applications, in which a protein molecule would play a role of a tiny molecular nanomachine to produce work. Tetdron may also find applications in future data storage devices with extreme capacities since 1 petabits of data can theoretically be written inside a Tetdron crystal measuring only 1 mm on a side. | ||
<b>References</b><br> | <b>References</b><br> | ||
Revision as of 10:52, 28 April 2019
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