Morphogenic Lattice Distortions in Protein Superstructures in Demospongiae

Solid assemblies of organic compounds often include some inevitable misfit between constituents, giving rise to geometric frustration. In order to fit into the assembly the molecular building blocks must distort. In many cases, for small enough assemblies there are non-local compromises that are more energetically favourable. These are associated with non-uniform distortions and highly cooperative response between the constituents. This may result in tendency to form filaments, lattice distortions and large morphological variations during the growth of the assembly. In the proposed experiment, we will apply the BCDI method to follow the evolution of lattice distortions in a branched protein single crystals formed by a living organism. This will not only provide the first experimental evidence to geometric frustration in protein crystals, but will also allow us to establish an explicit toolkit for controlled branching of macromolecular crystals.