Luft Joseph R, Grant Thomas D, Wolfley Jennifer R, Snell Edward H
Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute, 700 Ellicott Street, Buffalo, NY 14203, USA.
Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute, 700 Ellicott Street, Buffalo, NY 14203, USA ; Department of Structural Biology, SUNY Buffalo, 700 Ellicott Street, Buffalo, NY 14203, USA.
J Appl Crystallogr. 2014 May 29;47(Pt 3):1158-1161. doi: 10.1107/S1600576714008899. eCollection 2014 Jun 1.
X-ray crystallography typically requires the mounting of crystals, which can make the sample difficult to manipulate when it is small and the microscope objective is close to the crystallization plate. By simply moving the objective to the bottom of a clear crystallization plate (inverting the normal view), crystals were able to be manipulated and harvested from wells having a 0.9 mm diameter and 5.0 mm depth. The mounting system enabled the structural solution of the 187 amino acid N-terminal domain of glutaminyl-tRNA synthetase from crystals that appeared during high-throughput screening but proved recalcitrant to scale-up and optimization. While not a general mounting solution, the simple expedient of removing the objective lens from the area where manipulation and harvesting occur greatly facilitates the manual, or even automated, process.
X射线晶体学通常需要安装晶体，当样品很小时且显微镜物镜靠近结晶板时，这会使样品难以操作。通过简单地将物镜移到透明结晶板的底部（颠倒正常视角），就能从直径0.9毫米、深度5.0毫米的孔中操作并收获晶体。该安装系统使得在高通量筛选过程中出现但难以扩大规模和优化的谷氨酰胺-tRNA合成酶187个氨基酸的N端结构域的晶体能够解析其结构。虽然这不是一种通用的安装解决方案，但从进行操作和收获的区域移除物镜这一简单权宜之计极大地促进了手动甚至自动化过程。
