Template formation in crystals and solutions
In this study, we first generated templates and conducted
experiments to confirm the growth of crystal nuclei. Templates
were obtained by irradiating protein crystals with light, assuming
that dimers generated by the reaction between adjacent molecules
in the crystal would act as templates for crystal formation. In
contrast, photochemically-induced dimers resulting from reactions
in solution can occur at various sites, and so the position of
the amino acid that reacts is not limited. Therefore, not all the
dimers in the solution will have a structure that functions as a
template. For this reason, we predicted that the template
generation efficiency would vary between cases in which dimers
were generated by reactions in a crystal or in a solution