In a week to ABRCMS and after that to AICHE Student Conference…
At this time, I am finishing my poster for the ABRCMS presentation and with it, I have noticed that my project have not progressed that much because the results of XRD have not been received from the people at Spain. They are supposed to be working with the same diffractometer mentioned in the papers related to my research.
Nevertheless, in a scale from 1-5, I would give my investigation a 3 because I have obtained, qualitatively, better crystals while polymerizing in glass Granada Crystallization Boxes. Though I have not got neither compared the quantitative data of the previous lysozyme crystals, which is in progress at Spain, with the data obtained during this semester, I have done the simulation mentioned in the previous posting. This simulation have confirmed that my results are consistent with what is expected.
One of the most important parts of my research is the analysis of crystals with an XRD to show if my lysozyme crystals have a better quality than those crystallized in microgravity at NASA. Hydrogels provide conditions of microgravity since they suppress sedimentation and convection effects. This is excellent to achieve crystallization but we need to know if the neutral hydrogels used in the GCB provide conditions for a diffusion of the precipitating agent that can generate a supersaturation profile adequate to crystallize good crystals. The major significance of this project is then obtaining good crystals of proteins that are actually hard to crystallize to perform them an XRD. This can make us able to study proteins that have not been studied in depth. Also, as long term goal, the project is directed to crystallizing proteins that have never been crystallized.
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