Abstract The rapid advance in superconducting magnet technology enables more and more applications for the use of high magnetic fields in scientific researches and industrial manufacturing. These applications include material processing, separation, chemical reaction, nuclear fusion, high energy physics, and many more. Generally, a superconducting magnet provides both homogeneous and inhomogeneous magnetic fields simultaneously, and both can affect the samples in the field so that the magnetic field can be utilized for various purposes. A homogeneous or inhomogeneous magnetic field will exert a torque on suspending particles in a solution if the particles have anisotropic magnetic susceptibility, which will further influence the properties of the solution; in an inhomogeneous magnetic field, a repulsive force will act on a diamagnetic solution so that the levels of apparent or effective gravity of the solution can be tuned in a vertical magnetic field. These effects can be utilized to govern the physical and chemical processes in solution like crystallization. In recent years, high magnetic fields have been applied in protein crystallization. It was found that a magnetic field can align the crystals along the field direction, decrease the diffusivity of macromolecules in the solution, and increase the viscosity of the solution; a suitable inhomogeneous magnetic field can damp the natural convection substantially, which resembles the case in a space environment. Both homogeneous and inhomogeneous magnetic fields have been found to improve the quality of some protein crystals. These discoveries showed that the researches on protein crystallization in high magnetic field is potentially valuable, because obtaining high quality protein crystals is important for 3-dimensional structure determination of proteins using X ray crystallography. This paper will review the background and more recent progress and discuss the future perspectives in this research field.

中文翻译：

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磁场中的蛋白质结晶

摘要 超导磁体技术的飞速发展使得强磁场在科学研究和工业制造中的应用越来越广泛。这些应用包括材料加工、分离、化学反应、核聚变、高能物理等等。通常，超导磁体同时提供均匀和非均匀磁场，两者都可以影响磁场中的样品，从而可以将磁场用于各种目的。如果粒子具有各向异性的磁化率，均匀或不均匀的磁场会对溶液中悬浮的粒子施加扭矩，这将进一步影响溶液的性质；在不均匀的磁场中，排斥力将作用在抗磁性溶液上，因此可以在垂直磁场中调整溶液的表观重力或有效重力水平。这些效应可用于控制溶液中的物理和化学过程，如结晶。近年来，高磁场已应用于蛋白质结晶。发现磁场可以使晶体沿场方向排列，降低溶液中大分子的扩散率，增加溶液的粘度；一个合适的非均匀磁场可以大大抑制自然对流，这类似于空间环境中的情况。已发现均匀和非均匀磁场都可以提高某些蛋白质晶体的质量。这些发现表明，高磁场中蛋白质结晶的研究具有潜在的价值，因为获得高质量的蛋白质晶体对于使用 X 射线晶体学测定蛋白质的 3 维结构非常重要。本文将回顾背景和最近的进展，并讨论该研究领域的未来前景。