July 6th blog

We spent our morning in three places, the X-ray lab, computer lab and conference room. We first looked at one of our lysozyme crystals setup wil liquid nitrogen ready for diffraction. The liquid nitrogen is necessary to prevent the protein from drying out. We then went to the computer lab to obtain data set of the diffraction pattern. Raimund Fromme then showed us how to obtain pretty ribbonlike form picture of the protein from the data set using a specific program. This part was really exciting because I have seen these protein pictures from Biology books but never really know how it was made. We then spent the second half of our morning listening to one of the grad student's presentation.