Nucleation: The Birth of a New Protein Phase

Abstract

Nucleation is a process that initiates phase transitions. Since the classical work of Gibbs on nucleation thermodynamics at the end of the nineteenth century, research into nucleation processes has been spread into a huge variety of scientific fields. To date, nucleation has been studied in disciplines ranging from biophysics to cosmology in systems spanning atomic to planetary scales and beyond (1). Proteins in solution are also known historically to form a variety of states and structures through nucleation (2,3).