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A Brighter View Of A Hidden World
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Yet, within each organism is a hidden world of proteins that make all of
this possible. Proteins are the building blocks of all life, and how they
react with one another in living organisms determines many things,
including if a creature will be healthy or get sick. Understanding this
hidden world of proteins and their interactions is, needless to say, of
intense interest to scientists and doctors.
The Center for Macromolecular Crystallography, a NASA Commercial Space
Center located at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), has just
joined with 19 other southeastern universities to gain access to one of the
brightest sources of X-rays in the world: The Advanced Photon Source at
Argonne National Laboratory. UAB and the other universities have joined
together to form the Southeastern Regional Collaborative Access Team
(SERCAT). This team will build offices and two beamlines, the pathways
that will tap the bright X-rays of the Advanced Photon Source and guide
them to the target.
Access to these beamlines provides a host of new opportunities for the
commercial research being done through the Center for Macromolecular
Crystallography. Because the beamlines offer some of the brightest X-rays
currently available, smaller crystals can be analyzed and the structure of
various crystals can be determined much more precisely. Aside from helping
make the research more productive, the beamlines also open up possibilities
for creative ingenuity and scientific progress for the Center.
Though often more nearly perfect than Earth-grown counterparts, space-grown
crystals grow more slowly. Because shuttle missions are relatively short,
the crystals produced on them can be quite small. Access to the Advanced
Photon Source will allow these small crystals to be analyzed and their
structure determined with an accuracy not previously possible.
Commercial research, such as that being done through the Center for
Macromolecular Crystallography, is made possible through NASA's Space
Product Development Program, a partnership between NASA, academia, and U.S.
Industry. Working through Commercial Space Centers that are funded by both
NASA and Industry, companies can do research designed to produce today the
products and technologies of tomorrow. The research effort belongs to the
industries involved, who are responsible for designing, funding, and
analyzing the research. NASA, as its part of the partnership, provides
access to microgravity for selected research.
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