Actual theme picture
April 4, 2023. Happy Easter to everyone. This is the Easter crystal bunny pushing a lysozyme crystal that was heat treated in solution at 45oC for 10min in solution and set up for crystallization. Crystals that were heat treated diffracted to higher resolution with lower mosaicity. May the Easter crystal bunny bring you high diffracting crystals!
Past theme pictures
January 16, 2023. This is a periodic lattice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to commemorate his leadership in the U.S. civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968. He promoted nonviolence, empathy, patience and compassion to overcome anger, hatred and resentment. The picture is a two-dimensional repeating pattern of Dr. King. The primitive lattice structure is oblique (a parallelogram) in P1 plane group. The rotational symmetry group is 1 with a translational symmetry of a Dr. King unit.
January 1, 2023. Left: X-ray diffraction pattern of T. thioreducens IPPase crystal collected at SERCAT BM22 at room temperature behind a firework display. Right: Canavalin rhombohedral crystals are in a glass of Champagne. Of course this is not to scale. Canavalin crystals were actually about 0.5 cubic millimeter and its photograph was photoshopped in the champagne glass. Protein crystals do not usually grow so big and they certainly would not be stable in Champagne. Sorry, the picture is fake but the crystals themselves are real. Happy New Year!
December 25, 2022. Frosty the Snowman is collecting with his right hand the falling snow of PCNA structures from T. thioreducens and tossing a crystal of egg-hen lysozyme with his left hand. The trimeric structure of IPPase is decorated on Frosty’s tummy. Our lab celebrates more crystals thus “Crystal-mas” –more crystals! Merry Christmas 2022!
December 16, 2022. Cheering for the players and the fans of the FIFA World cup in Qatar. The soccer ball is the C60 fullerene structure, a large cage-like molecule composed of 60 carbon atoms. Congratulations to Argentina for winning the world cup. Mais vive la France quand même!
