One plate, two plates, a thousand plates. How crystallisation changes with large numbers of samples.

Turning commercial lab automation into a high-throughput centre requires an underlying process, and implementing checks to ensure that the process is working as it should. At the Collaborative Crystallisation Centre (C3), protein samples from local, national and international groups are set up in crystallisation screening and optimisation experiments with two thousand 96 well plates being set up each year. During its five years of operation, the C3 has implemented a series of enabling protocols - from simple 'reality checks' to determine if a screen has evaporated during storage to more sophisticated systems such as a sample labelling and tracking system. The most important - and perhaps surprising - lesson has been how much effort is required to effectively communicate between the centre and its clients, as well as between the centre's staff members. It is easy to confuse the concept of 'high throughput' in any field with the idea of setting up an experiment quickly. Although automation can be used to set up a single experiment more rapidly than can be done by hand, the distinguishing feature of a high throughput technology is the sustainability of the increased rate.