Student Research at Duke

Well, readers, you’ve made it this far. I’m now going to take you into the secret workings of 4th floor Nanaline Duke, where the magic of protein design happens.

The Hellinga Laboratory consists of two main sections: the East Lab and the West Lab. The East Lab is the larger of the two, and where most lab members work.

This lab is basically a workshop for proteins. Just about anything you need to build and test a protein is here. One of the tools used to this end is a robot that actually assembles our proteins for us:

Another such powerful tool is the massive Beowulf Cluster supercomputer. This computer is able to perform the arduous calculations necessary for protein folding:

East lab also contains offices for the software designers and the researchers:

Unfortunately, none of those desks are mine. To find my space, we have to go to the West Lab.

The West Lab is kind of like a really big closet; nobody works there, but it holds a lot of stuff we need (such as myself):

However, this lab does house one of our most important machines, our DNA synthesizer (affectionately known as Bertha):

And now that we are back at my desk, I am afraid I must get back to work. However, I’ll be back with a new post tomorrow morning. Until then, have a good day.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 22nd, 2007 at 12:38 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.