Diffusion-limited kinetics of the solution–solid phase transition of molecular substances
- *Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204; and †Center for Microgravity and Materials Research, University of Alabama, Huntsville, AL 35899
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Edited by John M. Prausnitz, University of California, Berkeley, CA, and approved November 26, 2002 (received for review May 21, 2002)
Abstract
For critical tests of whether diffusion-limited kinetics is an option for the solution–solid phase transition of molecular substances or whether they are determined exclusively by a transition state, we performed crystallization experiments with ferritin and apoferritin, a unique pair of proteins with identical shells but different molecular masses. We find that the kinetic coefficient for crystallization is identical (accuracy ≤7%) for the pair, indicating diffusion-limited kinetics of crystallization. Data on the kinetics of this phase transition in systems ranging from small-molecule ionic to protein and viri suggest that the kinetics of solution-phase transitions for broad classes of small-molecule and protein materials are diffusion-limited.
Footnotes
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↵ ‡ To whom correspondenceshould be addressed. E-mail: vekilov{at}uh.edu.
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This paper was submitted directly (Track II) to the PNAS office.
- Abbreviation:
- AFM,
- atomic force microscopy
- Copyright © 2003, The National Academy of Sciences
