Just found out some scientists like tattoos.
Our contribution:
1) hkl (on the appropriate knuckles)
2) Bragg’s Law (arm)
3) Diffraction pattern (full back)
Send in pictures of your crystallography tattoos for bonus points.
In true end of the year originality here are 10 favorites from 2009:
1) Best Online Introductions to Crystallography
2) Scientific Research in 10 Simple Rules
3) Free Crystallographic Space Group Diagrams and Symbols
4) Ultimate List of Protein Crystallization Resources
5) Scientific Presentation Resources
6) 17 Structural Journals with RSS
7) Ultimate List on Cryocrystallography & Radiation Damage
Covering your Tracks
9) 10 Ways to Comfort a Crystallographer
10) Top 5 Lies of Principle Investigators
X-ray crystallography in a basic sense studies the result of photons interacting with electrons.
How do we describe how photons are reflected?
Richard Feynman won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 for fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics.
Vega Science has put together a series lectures that Richard give at the University of Auckland in 1978.
Below is a time line with a couple of notes from his 77 minute lecture entitled:
Part 1: Photons – Corpuscles of Light
00:00 Introduction
04:40 Light
09:35 Theory of interaction with light
14:42 Great analogy between checkers and nature
20:20 Explains the theory
23:15 ‘I enjoyed your lecture, but didn’t understand it’
26:15 ‘Nobody understands it’
33:13 Possible meaning
34:45 Describes theory
40:48 Reflection
47:50 Science is based on probabilities
57:10 Answer to the reflection Problem
68:10 Questions
The lecture makes me wonder about the relationship between protein crystal size and the probability of photons being diffracted. I am starting to get uneasy about how much is explained away due to crystal packing.
I had the pleasure of taking my first crystallography course from Dr. Cora Lind. Cora was kind enough to ask me to speak at the American Crystallography Association meeting this year. In addition, she has always been patient and helpful with my crystallography questions.
Recently, Cora arranged for the video taping of her crystallography course.
I have not yet watched all the videos (in total they run nearly 23 hours!), but feel comfortable recommending them since I took the course. Also there are copies of the slides from each lecture to make it easy to follow along at home.
The relevance of the introductory lecture made me smile, ‘you may find publications with crystal data that may not make sense… you need to be able to judge that.’
I am really grateful for Cora putting this lecture series together.
If you find this video series helpful or think the crystallographic community would benefit from more lectures being posted, please drop a comment. Thanks.
The career path in crystallography is hardly straightforward. A scientist can end up moving many times over the course of their career. You know – back breaking, couch up 3 flights of stairs, garage bag full of clothes moving.
There are three main areas that are usually considered when looking for a position: government, academics or industry. A transition between academics to industry maybe the least understood since much of what is done in industry is not made public.
Peter comments:
…I would be extremely grateful if you could start a thread on people’s experience in moving from academia to industry. I am interested in doing this once I’ve finished my post-doc… It would be great to hear stories from people that have made the transition without prior industrial experience.
How does one best prepare for this type of transitions? Have you made the transition from academics to industry? Could you share some words of wisdom? Thanks.
We are putting together a purchasing list of supplies for a crystallography lab to last the next 12-18 months. The lab has been in operation for a while, so I am interested mostly in disposable products like LB, tips, chemicals, transformation kits and screens. We already have equipment such as incubators, centrifuges and HPLCs.
If you have heard of any good deals or have a product that we should be considering, feel free to send me an email or leave a comment.
@VanjaAvdic points us to a wonderful resource that focuses on the installation of crystallographic software on OS X. The site was developed by the Scott Research Group and is wiki style, so feel free to make it better!
In addition, off of the Scott Lab page is a compilation of resources for those that want to brush up on their Unix.
The web-based tool ValLigURL, which is totally pronounced Valley Girl (serious, check the pdf) allows a crystallographer to compare and validate ligands in the PDB.
This server provides a way to examine whether the ligand in a structure has been seen in a particular conformation. The great part is that this server allows you to upload your own structure for a comparison against existing structures. The server takes about a minute to run.
This could be helpful if you are trying to determine whether you have kissing waters, crystallization remnant or your ligand of interest.
The following is a JMOL output (one option) of a search ligand (thick lines) verse the ligand (thin lines) from MSDchem.
Finally, the server can be used by structural bioinformaticians to examine conformational diversity and quality for one or more ligands in the PDB. In other words, this server is hella sweet.
Here are 12 posts that you may have missed.
Scientific Presentation Resources
Most Popular Homology Modeling Servers
Top 5 Lies of Principle Investigators
From Paper to Painful
Easily Make a Movie with PyMOL
10 Ways to Comfort a Crystallographer
Free Crystallographic Space Group Diagrams and Symbols
Microlytic: Crystal Former and SmartScreen
What is RSS?
Top 5 Resources for Membrane Protein 3D Structure
Best Online Introductions to Crystallography
Scientific Research in 10 Simple Rules
Quick answer: hell no.
Here is the equation:
Did that help you?
Did you feel that light bulb go on, like YES! Now I know if this structure is good
Thank goodness they mentioned that equation in 6 point font
Yeah, I get that Rfree came out only 17 years ago and some people still haven’t figured out how to use a seat belt on a plane, but seriously, why is this going on?