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About

Alice Grassick is a structural biologist whose research has made meaningful contributions to the field of structural genomics, particularly through the development of efficient crystallization methodologies and the structural characterization of bacterial proteins. Her most widely recognized work, "A Medium-Throughput Crystallization Approach" (2002), has garnered 80 citations and demonstrates the practical value of combining robotic large-scale screening with targeted manual or automated optimization — a two-step strategy that significantly streamlined the crystallization pipeline within structural genomics programs. This contribution helped advance the broader goal of solving protein structures at scale, influencing how researchers approach crystallization workflows. Grassick has also contributed to the structural annotation of proteins of unknown function, including her work on the *E. coli* yddE protein, whose crystal structure revealed an unexpected and striking homology with diaminopimelate epimerase — an insight with implications for understanding conserved enzymatic functions across both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. Her research sits at the intersection of methodology development and fundamental structural biology, offering tools and discoveries that support the ongoing effort to functionally characterize the bacterial proteome.