Dispatches from BIO 2016
Growing crystal
(Mission patch and the PCG investigation hardware. Image credit: Kristofer Gonzalez-DeWhitt)
According to Savin, growing protein crystals in space is helpful because they are believed to be of higher fidelity than those grown on earth in a 1G environment.
Lilly’s experiment (CASIS PCG 4-2) is specifically investigating the effect of microgravity on the co-crystallization of a membrane protein with a medically relevant compound.
“We use the crystals of proteins that are biologically important to understand the molecular structure,” Savin told us.