Crystals the Magic of Life in Different Forms

Structural characterization of macromolecules is often performed by x-ray crystallography. In the x-ray crystallography techniques, the first (and often most difficult) step is to obtain adequate crystals. In this image I have captured four different crystals of the same protein that were crystallized under different conditions. These crystals were grown following standard crystallization technique with hanging drop vapor diffusion, and the images were captured on an inverted microscope.