Dynamics of Layer Growth in Protein Crystallization

this paper, we review recent results that explain some morphological and kinetics phenomena that occur during layer-wise growth of protein crystals. The explanations are based on ideas arising from the field of "nonlinear dynamics". For the crystal growth processes that are the main themes of this review, "dynamics" refers to unsteady collective behavior and bunching of molecular steps on growth surfaces. These dynamics arise due to the interactions between individual growth steps (crystal layer edges) moving on the crystal-solution interface. "Kinetics", on the Peter Vekilov was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1963. He received his M.S. degree with Honors in Chemistry in 1985 from Moscow State University and his Ph.D. degree in 1991 from the Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Crystallography, under the supervision of Professor Dr. Alexander A. Chernov. After postdoctoral stints in Bulgaria and Japan, he worked as a Research Scientist at the Center for Microgravity and Materials Research (CMMR) at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, AL, with Professor Franz Rosenberger. Since 1998 he has been an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the same University and led the Physics and Chemistry of Crystallization Group at the CMMR. In 1995 he received the Young Scientist Award of the International Union of Crystallography for research in protein crystallization. His main focus is protein crystallization and other related phase transitions and their biomedical implications. Unsteady kinetics, instabilities, and defect formation in protein and inorganic crystals are prime foci of scientific effort