Dear crystallographers, I am working on an outreach program through the APS to get motivated high school students some/more research experience. As I work at a crystallography beamline (LS-CAT), we are trying to get a crystallographically centered experiment in place that will be interesting to a high school student. Among other ideas, I had mentioned to the teacher the possibility of crystallizing lysozyme directly from egg whites. The teacher picked up on this idea as the one he and his students would like to pursue. I have done a bit of reseach and I have found the Alderton and Fevold paper from '46 about direct crystallization from egg whites. However I am unable to find any papers that refine or expand upon this experiment. While there appears to be some literature about lysozyme and crystallizing the same, these papers do not use lysozyme directly from hen egg whites. Do any of you know of any more recent papers or procedures that would be relevant or easily adapted to an high school environment?
Our goal is to get diffraction quality crystals, expose the crystals at the beamline, and present a poster of the experience. Cheers and thanks, David Smith -- David W Smith Research Scientist LS-CAT APS, Argonne IL W:(630)343-9811 F:(630)252-4664
