Dave Gell was visiting from U Tasmania this week to determine the structure of a protein he has been working on for some time. Mario and Henry had kindly purified some protein for Dave – who’s been busy with other work – and they grew some *beautiful* and very stout looking crystals. With James Walshe’s help, they collected about three tons of data and then Mitchell guided them through the structure determination process (what a team effort!). A particularly cute feature of the process was that they solved the structure using anomalous signal obtained from iron atom in the protein – which can actually be observed on our home source. Who needs one of those synchrotron things?

The data look superb – and the final resolution should be less than 1.7 A or so – very nice indeed and great for Dave to be there to see the fruits of his labours on the project…

We took advantage of Dave being here to explore the coastal walk from Maroubra down to La Perouse – which is quite amazing – fantastic scenery and much more ‘wild’ than the Bondi to Bronte. Could be a lab walk…?