Outsourcing crystal growth... to space

Sometimes, distance can lend a new perspective to a problem. For Japanese researchers studying protein crystal growth, that distance was 250 miles up—the altitude at which the International Space Station (ISS) orbits the Earth. To better isolate the growth of protein crystals from the effects of gravity, the group of Katsuo Tsukamoto in Tohoku University's Department of Earth and Planetary Science in Sendai, Japan, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency grew crystals in a specially-des