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Frank,

It is not just osmotic factors that need balancing, but the fact that polymers and salts don't always mix well.  PEG and high salt can form 2-phase systems that don't disperse well, particularly in a crystal.  Check out Ray et al. (Biochemistry 1991, 30, 6866-6875) where Bill Ray and and others from Purdue needed to exchange  ~2.1 M ammonium sulfate in phosphoglucomutase crystals to various PEGs just to do the kind of experiments you suggest.  It can be a pain, but osmolarity matching was not the big issue.  As Bill was an excellent, old-time physical biochemist, he developed the system based on first-principles.  You may also look up the work of Pierre Douzou and the cryoenzymology.  Douzou collaborated with Petsko on some protein crystal work doing the same kind of exchange to reduce the crystal's freezing point.

Cheers,

Michael

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R. Michael Garavito, Ph.D.
Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
603 Wilson Rd., Rm. 513   
Michigan State University      
East Lansing, MI 48824-1319
Office:  (517) 355-9724     Lab:  (517) 353-9125
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On Jul 26, 2014, at 3:42 PM, Frank von Delft <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi all - The Google fails me, so I'll the CCP4BBoogle:

Can anybody conjure up some of the references that describe the details of how to get a (say) PEG solution to have the same osmotic pressure as a (say) salt solution - in particular, this is for transferring a crystal from it's original salt condition into a more ligand-friendly PEG condition.

I know there was something from the late nineties, where specific lookup tables were either shown or mentioned;  but I've not been able to track it down.

Thanks!
phx