Almost at the end of the semester… waiting to get last data from XRD to write a paper

In general, I have continued what I was doing last semester during these months. First of all, I achieved to polymerize the hydrogels inside the Granada Crystallization Boxes, which is excellent because a flaw in the experimentation was eliminated. That flaw was due to the manipulation of the hydrogels while getting them inside the GCBs. Now, that is not necessary because the gels are already inside the GCBs and contain an amount of precipitating agent. Since that amount of salt is not enough to reach super-saturation, some studies on the diffusion of a dye across the hydrogels were performed. With this, I was able to conclude that, in several days, the required precipitating agent concentration would be reached if an amount of the solution is put on top of the gel. Most important, I have many lysozyme crystals that would be analyzed with X-Ray Diffraction on December, to get some quantitative results that we have been waiting for during all the semester. And I wrote that we have been waiting for these results from Spain because most of my crystals were sent there on May but we do not have news on that. The purpose of this was to get data with the same diffractometer used by García-Ruiz et al when they publish the paper that reports the lowest mosaicity for lysozyme. As a consequence of not having results yet, I crystallized more lysozyme and I am ready to perform XRD at Río Piedras. Then, we will move forward to write a paper on this project. Furthermore, several days ago, I was speaking with my mentor and we decided to continue the same project with proteins that are harder to crystallize. The goal of this variation in the experimentation is to prove that our hydrogels control the precipitating agent diffusion in a way that will allow us to optimize protein crystallization in general.

In brief, this semester has been of much importance in my project especially because I had the opportunity to present it in ABRCMS and AIChE Student Conference.