• Question: what is shooting cyrstals?

    Asked by ellanicoleeee to Dave on 14 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by tammyp1, jamesphillips, wassup.
    • Photo: David Briggs

      David Briggs answered on 14 Jun 2013:

      Hi Ellanicoleeee,

      When I say “shooting crystals” I mean taking the protein crystals I have made to a synchrotron (a particle accelerator, a bit like the large hadron collider, only smaller – the UK has one called “Diamond” (www.diamond.ac.uk) near Oxford) and ‘shooting’ them with an X-ray beam.

      It’s how we figure out what different molecules look like using Crystallography.

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