Snyder and Percy Rhodes, another NASA retiree also working at New Century Pharmaceuticals, are designing a new electrophoretic system that adds a flowfield and uses the electric field to focus the materials he wants to separate. Also, a variety of cells are extremely interesting for fractionating. You want to get purified cells, for certain treatments, so you don' t overload the patient with other components that they don't need. It's like picking a lock at the atomic scale. Once you have the purified proteins, much remains to be learned about how they assemble into crystals, and how that process might be improved.
Molecules form crystals because of atomic attractions between specific points on the molecule.
But no one is sure which ones are most critical for crystal growth. We can also study how important these contacts are to the nucleation and crystal growth process, and learn about the factors which drive crystal growth itself. Dr. Robert Naumann, also a former chief of the microgravity science division, is working on growing better crystals by putting them in a tight spot. Naumann now works at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. In this case, nutrient means proteins in solution.