Category Archives: Protein Crystallography

No, DeepMind has not solved protein folding

Posted on December 2, 2020 by Stephen

(Please note that this post was updated on 12th Dec 2020 – see below) This week DeepMind has announced that, using artificial intelligence (AI), it has solved the 50-year old problem of ‘protein folding’. The announcement was made as the … Continue reading →

Posted in Protein Crystallography, Science | 23 Comments

Anatomy of a blog post on the anatomy of a scientific discovery

Posted on January 26, 2016 by Stephen

At the risk of getting uber-meta, here is a blog post about writing my latest blog post at the Guardian. This was an account of a scientific discovery, albeit a minor one, that occurred during the process of shepherding the latest paper … Continue reading →

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Structural Biology: a beginner’s guide?

Posted on October 17, 2015 by Stephen

I got impatient waiting for my latest review article to come out, so here it is. The scheduled publication date has slipped twice now without the publisher getting in touch to explain why. The latest I’ve heard, after querying the … Continue reading →

Posted in Protein Crystallography, Science | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Australia Tour 2014

Posted on July 10, 2014 by Stephen

It’s funny how one thing leads to another. The video of my Friday Evening Discourse at the Royal Institution last year caught the attention of a former colleague and produced an invitation to contribute a lecture to her plans to … Continue reading →

Posted in Protein Crystallography, Science | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

The very interesting web of connections

Posted on November 22, 2013 by Stephen

The Royal Institution has made a rather lovely film about William and Lawrence Bragg, the father and son Nobel laureates who came up the method of structural analysis by X-ray crystallography around 100 years ago. The film is constructed around … Continue reading →

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Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without Carbon

Posted on December 12, 2012 by Stephen

I may not know much about Chemistry but I know what I like. And I like carbon. In fact, I’ve decided that it’s my favourite element. I’ll tell you why in the short video below, which is part of the … Continue reading →

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What’s your favourite colour?

Posted on April 14, 2012 by Stephen

What’s your favourite colour? Anyone who has socialised with small children will have been confronted with this serious-faced interrogation at some point. It’s the sort of question that erupts as soon as young kids learn to verbalise the jumble of … Continue reading →

Posted in Protein Crystallography, Science | Tagged , , | 54 Comments

Moving Molecules

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Stephen

Regular readers will know that molecules are my thing, that my scientific endeavours are devoted to revealing the intricate architecture of proteins — the molecular machines that sustain life. They will also know that I have at times struggled with the … Continue reading →

Posted in Protein Crystallography, Science | Tagged , , , | 13 Comments

Jam Yesterday

Posted on December 18, 2011 by Stephen

On a grey day back in October I made my way along Albemarle Street to the Royal Institution for the filming of DemoJam, a lively and light-hearted program of science produced by Jonathan Sanderson and the rest of the gang … Continue reading →

Posted in Communication, Protein Crystallography, Science | Tagged , , | 12 Comments

Real and False Economy

Posted on November 24, 2011 by Stephen

Last week I went to Germany to talk to a pharmaceutical company about my work on the blood protein, human serum albumin. It set me thinking. But first I need to tell you about albumin. Albumin is a surprisingly abundant … Continue reading →

Posted in Protein Crystallography, Science, Scientific Life | Tagged , | 18 Comments

Meet me on a Monday

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Stephen

This is shameless, shameless self-promotion but I was interviewed back in May by Carl Carruthers for his Meet a Scientist Monday podcast, which has gone live today. The interview was long enough ago for me — being of advanced years … Continue reading →

Posted in Communication, Fun, Protein Crystallography, Science | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Transport of Delight

Posted on June 12, 2011 by Stephen

I spent most of last weekend and all of yesterday finalising a chapter I had been asked to contribute to an upcoming monograph on human serum albumin. Monograph is a fancy word for book in academia. And academia is a … Continue reading →

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