Researchers have developed a new technique for crystallizing proteins that will ease experimentation into protein structures. In order to study protein structures, biologists must turn what is essentially a soup of purified protein into crystals that have a consistent and ordered structure. Each protein consists of a chain of amino acid subunits that twists into helices, ribbons and loops. Some proteins have less tidy molecular structures than others; in these, disordered amino acid chains dangle off the protein like split ends.