Pride

[minxy]

You know how I was all worn out from two weeks of reunining with my entire family?

Shit I've been trying to make work at work* WORKED. I HAD A FUCKING AWESOME DAY IN SCIENCE.

Now, please, universe: no thunderstorms in the next four days until data finishes collecting, okay? THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU FOR EVER>



*ask me how! But only if you want to know! For serious!

Comments

[geeksdoitbetter]

hooray for science!

[stultiloquentia]

ask me how! But only if you want to know!

I so do.

Okay, so...

[minxy]

In order to see the inner workings of biological molecules, like, down to "here an oxygen atom is bonded to a nitrogen at exactly this position", you have to convince a lot of soluble molecules to form a solid crystal (so you can shoot it with x-rays.)

I had one molecule that I'd tweaked in a particular way, and I really, really wanted to see it's atomic structure. The crystals were taking weeks and weeks to grow, usually in unusable ways (all morphed together, too small, etc.) But I came back from two weeks of vacation to see a six-week old crystal had grown huge! Like, almost half a millimeter huge! So I tossed it into the x-ray beam and it's doing GREAT! It's been great for two days! Now I just need it to do great for another two days (mostly relying on the weather to not throw a thunderstorm at us and disrupt power) and SOLVE THE STRUCTURE, YO.

For the geeks out there: I think I found the pathway of allosteric communication between the active site and the inhibitory site of a protein, according to the functional studies (steady-state kinetics). It would be incredible and broad impact if that's what the structure shows! Wooooooo!

Re: Okay, so...

[stultiloquentia]

I think I found the pathway of allosteric communication between the active site and the inhibitory site of a protein

What does this mean? Like, if you know where the pathway is, you could, hypothetically...plug it up? The way caffeine stuffs up adenosine receptors?

I am just wildly guessing in my effort to understand. I know squat about chem. But it sounds so cool! Thanks for explaining.

Re: Okay, so...

[minxy]

Kind of! Except that caffeine binds into the active site, like the single giant satellite dish on the Death Star. One pocket, one molecule: lock and key fit. Allostery is when you have two or more pockets, like a bowling ball, maybe. In one, you have the active site (where the magic chemistry happens!) and in the other, seemingly random pocket, which could be on the other side of the protein, you have an inhibitory site. How does the information get from one pocket to the other? Proteins are essentially large chemicals, not a lot of free space in there, but not a lot of will, either. So it must be structural, like a fulcrum and lever motion, or a seesaw: one pocket closes, the other one opens because of some structural change transferred between them. There's some Brownian motion in proteins, sometimes called the breathing effect, or the natural flexibility of the structure, but no big gears or electron signals or anything. So the structural changes are smaller, the problem was, they seemed to be smaller than the natural flexibility and breathing motions too.

People have been looking for allosteric communication in proteins for years, but it's a subtle ninja. Somehow the information in one pocket is transferred to the other, but because we only get snapshots of the structure, if there isn't big motion, big structural change, we can't interpret the information. In my case, the key was 10 years of poking at the problem, then a systematic project on my part, based on a comparison to a different protein. I showed with functional data that I disrupted something really significant, probably relating to (and in line with everything we theorize about) the allosteric communication in my protein. If I get the structure now, and it's ON, which is to say, the see saw is completely the other direction, I WIN AT SCIENCE. Yeah.

So I have a good data set now, and decent replicates. If the weather can hold off thunderstorming for just 12 more hours? I'll be golden.

In other news, I made a curry with kohlrabi and chard, a different kind of experiment, and it's really delicious! Spicy as hell, but some of us like that. Woo!

Re: Okay, so...

[minxy]

Er, sorry. About all that *points up*

Re: Okay, so...

[stultiloquentia]

OMG never apologize. I am a neeerrrd. Dad's a geologist/geophysicist and Mom's an artist/art historian; it almost came down to a literal coin toss when I had to pick a science vs. literature track at uni. I picked lit, but I still have an occasional pang of regret. I love it when people tell me things.

You're good at explaining. I like your similes; I grok those.

like the single giant satellite dish on the Death Star

That is so appallingly apt.

Hey, I just got interrupted by a phone call from the parentals, and told them what I was doing. Dad said, "Ooh, x-ray crystallography! I did that on meteorites in college!" *g*

Sputnik curry, who knew? I don't get enough kohlrabi to get bored with eating it raw, but I'll curry some of the chard and beet greens. And I have to figure out what to do about a pound of okra this week. What the hell? I'm a Canadian!