Never Comes Easy
Another day, another set of heavy atom trials. My overnight platinum soaks hurt my protein crystals pretty badly, but I don't think all hope is lost. Soaking them for about an hour and half today yielded the color change I was looking for. Think it'll just take some repeats and varying soak times/concentrations of the HA. Argh. Got a suggestion to use methyl-mercury, not sure if I will or not. 50mg of that stuff can kill you straight up (which, or course, is the amount the company sells you), and lesser amounts can fuck you up pretty badly. Troll-man Steve down in the xray lab said he solved a structure or two with it, and that it works well. I may save it for a last ditch, or see if I can persuade someone else to set it up for me. Check that, I'll probably set it up, but I need to figure out all of the precautions.
Sometimes it's so hard to tell if something is working properly, or if one should just abandon the cause in favor of something new, and potentially better. Working out the timing, whether it be soak length or the amount of time given to this particular condition, is key. But then again, science is always a problem of time.
I feel like I'm on the cusp of the solution here. Just need to keep on pushing for a few more days.
Sometimes it's so hard to tell if something is working properly, or if one should just abandon the cause in favor of something new, and potentially better. Working out the timing, whether it be soak length or the amount of time given to this particular condition, is key. But then again, science is always a problem of time.
I feel like I'm on the cusp of the solution here. Just need to keep on pushing for a few more days.