Senior chemistry major Blake Ford has been working with faculty member Dr. Burkett this semester, attempting to crystallize a low-coordinate iron complex as a simple model for the nitrogenase active site. Nitrogenase is an important enzyme in plants that converts nitrogen into more useful ammonia, which serves as a starting material for many natural and synthetic processes. Ammonia is an important starting material in fertilizers, but also in pharmaceuticals. With a non-plant based system, this process can be orders of magnitude more efficient. They are talking over plans to have the latest extraction product sent out for x-ray crystallography.