A new semester…

With the start of a new semester, new goals for my research come. Last semester, I was able to determine that different hydrogel morphologies controlled the diffusion coefficient of NaCl in different ways. This resulted on a variation of lysozyme crystals quality. Nevertheless, this study was performed in Granada Crystallization Boxes after getting the hydrogel in these small boxes. This means, that hydrogels were taken out of the polymerization container and transferred to the GCBs what resulted in an alteration of the real hydrogel “morphology” obtained via polymerization.

This situation brought me to a new main goal while performing experimentation. A way of polymerizing inside GCBs needs to be achieved. I have already tried to directly polymerize inside the GCBs but there is a problem, it seems that monomers react with the GCBs plastic what results on the broke of the plastic. Now, I am designing a new GCB, made of glass. During this week, the first trials with this glass GCB will be performed. If the polymerization is successful, I will be able to compare the controlled diffusion that each unaltered hydrogel produces.

In general, my goals for the semester will be:

• polymerize in the glass GCBs and crystallize lysozyme
• get an compare the quantitative data of the previous lysozyme crystals which is in progress at Spain (using the x-ray crystallographer that is used in similar published experimentations)
• determine if the neutral hydrogels provide a better control of the diffusion coefficient than agar does
• help my mentor in writing a scientific paper at the end of the semester

In brief, this semester’s research will be essentially to do the same as last semester but without altering the hydrogels to get a better understanding of the effect of them on the crystallization of lysozyme. Most importantly, we will try to get specific conclusions of the experimentation to write a paper, during the semester.

In addition, I will be developing my formal writing skills, specifically, while writing a scientific paper. For this, I will need to get and analyze data from x-ray crystallography. Other techniques or tasks to be employed could be the polymerization of hydrogels using ultraviolet light -instead of heat-, handcrafting (i.e., design and making a glass GCB), and the design of a new polymerization protocol depending on the results of the polymerization inside the glass GBC.