DETAILED VISUALIZATION OF PROTEIN CRYSTAL GROWTH

THIS INVESTIGATION WILL BE DIRECTED TOWARDS AN INSTRUMENT DEVELOPMENT FOR BOTH TERRESTRIAL AND MICROGRAVITY ENVIRONMENTS INVOLVING LIQUID DROP PROTEIN CRYSTAL GROWTH. VISUALIZATION AND RECORDING OF PARAMETERS CHARACTERISTIC OF GROWTH IN HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN CRYSTALS IS IMPORTANT TO THE OPTIMIZATION OF BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH AND PROCESSING. A LOW-COST TECHNIQUE WHICH ALLOWS QUANTITATIVE NON-INVASIVE OBSERVATION OF CRYSTAL NUCLEATION, UNIFORMITY OF GROWTH, ANDACCRETION PROCESSES IS STUDIED. THIS OPTICAL TECHNIQUE KNOWN AS COLOR SCHLIEREN CAN PROVIDE HIGH QUALITY IMAGES OF CRYSTALS FROM THE ONSET OF NUCLEATION THROUGH COMPLETED GROWTH, AND DETAILED DATA ARE GENERATED WHICH CAN BE MODELEDFOR BOTH TERRESTRIAL AND MICROGRAVITY (E.G. SPACE STATION) ENVIRONMENTS. ONE TYPE OF COLOR SCHLIEREN INSTRUMENT IS CURRENTLY IN USE BY THE INVESTIGATORS FOR STUDIES INVOLVING GROWTH AND ACCRETION OF CHAINS IN BIOLOGICAL SAMPLES AND CRYSTAL GROWTH IN METAL MODELS. BOTH STUDIES ARE BEING CARRIED OUT IN THE TERRESTRIAL ENVIRONMENT AS WELL AS IN MICROGRAVITY EXPERIMENTS ABOARD THE NASA KC-135 LOW GRAVITY SIMULATION AIRCRAFT WHOSE EXTREMELY LOW LEVELS OF BACKGROUND GRAVITY REDUCE OR ELIMINATE BUOYANCY-DRIVEN CONVECTION.