Protein Crystals - Backstage Science

Creating and studying proteins is a complicated business - in this video we take you behind the scenes with people who do it.
More Backstage Science at www.backstagescience.com/
Videos by Brady Haran for the Science Technology and Facilities Council (STFC).
Editing in this film by Stephen Slater

[@boyinapeatbog]

I see science, I dream science, I breath science. Science runs through my veins and through my soul.
Science OWNS my soul.
NEED MORE SCIENCE.

[@jeebersjumpincryst]

Bio has never held the interest that phys and chem has for me, but that blew me away. Amazing amazing amazing

[@MrComaToes]

I feel like the fellows at Lawrence Livermore, Cal-Tech, MIT and countless others are scrambling to find their own "Brady", and if not, they are missing out. As a 55 year old fan of the Sciences I have witnessed some incredible breakthroughs during my lifetime. To see the inner workings as shown so brilliantly here on BackstageScience, is to have the chance to see the proverbial tip of the scientific sword. Bravo Brady

[@boldger13]

One of the best videos yet!

[@DracoMhuuh]

I just learned about Fourier Analysis and convolution, diffraction at our university and it's fascinating to see how it is used across all scientific fields, truly powerfull concepts

[@porkypine1888]

Thanks Brady, love the vids!

[@madsciclare]

I really love this video!
I'm interested in protein crystals but there's so little information that I can find

[@BackstageScience]

thank you!

[@DaffyDaffyDaffy33322]

Subed as soon as I realized Brady was making these videos :)

[@BackstageScience]

cool... cheers for watching

[@BecauseILoveeMusic]

I have to write an essay on this. Thank you for making this video, It's very helpful :)

[@StoogesTattoo]

Awesome

[@RMoribayashi]

One of the reasons the crystals are so small is that as they grow they remove material from the solution near the crystals, changing the density of the solution near the crystal. Gravity causes convection currents to form in the solution as the less dense parts rise, deforming larger crystals. That's why they do a lot of protein crystal growth experiments in space. The lower convection in a microgravity environment allows larger crystal growth and also larger proteins to be crystallized.

[@piranha031091]

Wow, I wasn't aware that complex macromolecules like proteins could crystallize so nicely!

[@OmegaPaladin144]

That's a good question. Typically, you add in an antibiotic resistance gene along with your protein, then use select for only those that have the vector or "vehicle". That might eliminate some of the mutants. From my experience, the process of inserting a gene vector and turning into protein has a notable failure rate, and the natural mutation of the bacteria may be part of that.

[@13someguy13]

The cool thing about this video is that I've already had the opportunity to do protein generation and purification with HYRS when I was 16.

[@petros_adamopoulos]

Do crystallized proteins retain their shape and how well? I'm thinking in particular of active sites that are dependent on the ternary structure.

[@ma356289]

the first video in youtube without dislikes

[@SuperibyP]

PCR was written on the block of test tubes at about 00:44, does that stand for Polymerase Chain Reaction, the process by which DNA can be replicated outside of living tissue?

[@BackstageScience]

you're welcome!

[@MsTrance1]

Does anyone Know that if you use gene insertion in bacteria to produce proteins, does the nature mutation accumulation have any effect on the results?

[@TomatoBreadOrgasm]

Video is not long enough NEED MORE SCIENCE

[@loading_wait]

it looked like bradys work but i wasnt sure... then he spoke, THEN NEAL!

[@poelfkat]

great couldn't you have released this vid 2 weeks earlier then I could have used it as source in my report about DNA and Proteins
Anyway thanks for uploading

[@OmegaPaladin144]

Yeah - it's the first step in producing enough of your gene so that you can add it to the vector or "vehicle" he was talking about. I made (or attempted to make - this is not anywhere near easy) proteins in grad school like that

[@kj369kj]

Science!

[@TomatoBreadOrgasm]

The real issue is getting the protein in the shape you're interested in studying. The crystallization won't hurt the structure, it's rather an issue of the "willingness" of a given conformation of said protein to crystallize that's an issue. Biochemists have some very clever ways around such issues, such as 1C47 on pdb (dot) org, in which, to obtain the bonding of phosphoglucomutase to its substrate, 1,6-BPG, they covalently bonded the substrate to the protein itself, locking it in place.

[@MrTinnPeach]

Really interesting video. Rather than putting these sort of videos here you should make a new channel about biology. There are some fascinating processes that happen at the cellular level.

[@ma356289]

new in this channel

[@sinachiniforoosh]

Brady I wanted to start a science channel but looks like you've already done everything :(

[@TomatoBreadOrgasm]

That is a unanimous vote, Brady.

[@mysecretadd]

2:35 NEIL?!!
2:40 oh.

[@thewii552]

2:35 No, not THAT Neil...

[@Ryerbu]

Brian badonde.

[@illustriouschin]

yet another Brady channel, wow. the guy must have clones growing in that lab somewhere.

[@vtwinbreed]

Set the information aside in your brain, put bacteria on it, form proteins on it, and bank on it. :-D

[@wstmess]

Biology ;)

[@PrivateAckbar]

He looks a bit like Feynman.

[@koulukakara]

you must be new here

[@MatthiasKlees]

yes i am also no friend of cut-it-for-the-stupid-ones science videos