期刊名称:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN:0027-8424
电子版ISSN:1091-6490
出版年度:2003
卷号:100
期号:3
页码:792-796
DOI:10.1073/pnas.0333065100
语种:English
出版社:The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要: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.