Beyond the Boundary 

Resembling an aerial view of a city, corridors of roads and houses sprawl until they reach the outer edges of this intriguing image, which shows small lysozyme crystals growing in a droplet.  

Found in tears and saliva, lysozyme is an enzyme that breaks down bacterial cell walls. Almost everything is known about lysozyme but there are many proteins we don’t know so much about.  

Scientists grow crystals of proteins to study their shape and learn more about how proteins function in our bodies. 

These crystals helped set up the Bio21-WEHI Crystallisation Facility. This facility is located in the Melbourne Biomedical Precinct and its cutting-edge technologies are used by researchers studying cancer, autoimmune diseases, bacterial pathogens and much more. 

Artists

• Julie Nguyen 

• Roxanne Smith