• Question: how much do the crystals sell for? just curious

    Asked by anon-185517 to William, Rebecca, Martyna, Callum, Alice, Adam on 6 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Callum McHugh

      Callum McHugh answered on 6 Nov 2018:

      That’s a great question and it depends on the crystal. Diamond is a crystalline form of carbon which is pretty expensive….:-)

    • Photo: Alice Loasby

      Alice Loasby answered on 6 Nov 2018:

      I don’t think I could sell my protein crystals for very much at all!

    • Photo: Martyna Pastok

      Martyna Pastok answered on 7 Nov 2018:

      Depending what crystals you are talking a bout as crystallography is a broad term. You can crystallise salts, proteins or for instance the most famouse carbon – and it is diamond – which is very expensive. You cannot really sell protein crystals. Probably in certain cases some pharmaceutical companies would be interested if you could crystallise a protein, a drug target, which they are not able to do and which they are really interested in.

    • Photo: Rebecca Roddan

      Rebecca Roddan answered on 7 Nov 2018:

      Depends what the crystals are of… If you have a protein crystals, no value really and they’d just breakdown if you tried to put them in air and they’re so small you can’t see them without a microscope.

      If you had diamond crystals or something larger, made of a new material, then probably quite a lot. Would depend on each type.

    • Photo: William Glass

      William Glass answered on 15 Nov 2018:

      That’s a fun question, I don’t really know! As Callum said, I think the Carbon based ones (like diamond) probably sell for the most. I think protein crystals are very valuable, not exactly in monetary terms but certainly in what they can tell us about protein function.

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