>> The experiment involves really trying
to understand why protein crystals seem
to form more perfectly
in microgravity versus here on earth.
What I hope to see is --
not only really get a good understanding of the rate
at which crystals grow in space versus here on Earth --
we're comparing everything with ground controls
that we perform here on Earth --
but also to see if space can select out for the pure form
of the protein, eliminating impurities that are always
in protein crystal growth solutions.
Microgravity is important because, in space,
without convective flows due to gravity that we see here
on Earth, a crystal grows much more slowly.
That allows the molecules to come together more perfectly,
and the more perfectly aligned those molecules are,
the better the quality of the crystal.
And then when we bring it back to Earth, when we x-ray it --
we actually expose it to x-rays --
we see more detail in the three-dimensional structure
of the protein, and that enables us
to better understand how it functions in our body
or in bacteria or viruses.
And it also enables us to perform,
in some cases, drug development.
There's a National Research Announcement that NASA puts
out for all scientists to propose against.
And I wrote a proposal, and it gets peer-reviewed
by outside scientists.
And they select the ones
that they feel are most appropriate, the top proposals.
And I was lucky enough to be selected.
And so from that point on, it's a matter of just doing the work
and eventually getting approved for your flight experiment.
I think what excites me the most
about this particular experiment --
because I've flow others on the space shuttle
and on the space station,
all involving protein crystallization --
is that we know we get better crystals in microgravity.
The question is, why?
And this experiment is going to really provide a lot of the data
to help us understand the multiple possible reasons
that microgravity could be playing a role
in producing higher-quality protein crystals.