Dear Jacob, As mentioned before by Frank, many insect viruses use in vivo crystals as their main infectious form: *The molecular organization of cypovirus polyhedra.* Nature 446, 97–101 (2007). Coulibaly, F. et al. *The atomic structure of baculovirus polyhedra reveals the independent emergence of infectious crystals in DNA and RNA viruses.* Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106, 22205–22210 (2009). Coulibaly, F. et al.
You may also want to check out a short review if you are interested in more natural examples of in vivo crystallization: *Protein crystallization in vivo.* Curr Opin Colloid Interf Sci 11, 40–46 (2006). Doye, J. & Poon, W. You can even see them forming in infected cells in the following video: http://www.jbc.org/content/suppl/2001/05/11/276.20.16704.DC1/Video3.mov Best, Fasseli On 16 February 2013 06:44, Jacob Keller <[email protected]>wrote: > Dear Crystallographers, > > I was looking at some live, control HEK cells expressing just eGFP, and to > my great surprise, saw littered across the dish what appeared to be small > fluorescent needles (see attached--sorry about the size, but it's only ~1MB > total.) Can these possibly be fortuitous protein crystals? They were too > small to mount I think, and for what it's worth, parallel-transfected HeLa > cells did not have these things. But, some needles could be seen in the DIC > images as well, and the needles were only fluorescent with GFP filter sets, > and not CFP, YFP, or texas red filters. I thought of whale myoglobin > crystallizing on the decks of ships, but never thought I would see this.... > > Jacob > > -- > ******************************************* > Jacob Pearson Keller, PhD > Postdoctoral Associate > HHMI Janelia Farms Research Campus > email: [email protected] > ******************************************* >
