The human body is thought to consist of roughly 40,000 proteins, each of which folds into a unique configuration that determines its biochemical behaviour. Despite an enormous effort, only about 4,000 of the structures are known, with most determined by X-ray crystallography. The main bottleneck is the difficulty in obtaining good enough crystals, a process about which virtually no useful theories exist. This project looks at extremely simple models of globular proteins to try to gain some understanding of basic the mechanisms involved in crystallisation.
