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. 2015 Sep 3;1:15010. doi: 10.1038/npjmgrav.2015.10

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Copyright © 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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Top right is a typical hexagonal crystal of the protein canavalin grown on Earth, and equivalent crystals grown in ug on IML-2. The distinctive cusp in the Earth-grown crystal becomes a hexagonal lumen within the prismatic crystal grown in space. This is shown schematically for each below. The alteration in lumen or cusp morphology is a direct consequence of nutrient depletion in μg at the most rapidly growing face of the crystals and it illustrates the effect of the concentration gradient that persists in space. IML-2, International Microgravity Laboratory-2.