• Question: What Crystilation and Hiv-1 studies?and how hard are they

    Asked by herbie100301 to Duncan on 17 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Duncan Gaskin

      Duncan Gaskin answered on 17 Mar 2013:


      I had to make crystals of a protein found in the HIV-1 virus. To do this I had to make the protein in a bacteria called Escherichia coli so that I had enough of it to work with. Once I had enough of the protein I had to try and make it form crystals, this took a lot time and trying different things. I wanted crystals of this protein so that I could shine X-rays through it and work out its shape which is very important in helping us understand how it works.

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