Barthel Tatjana, Huschmann Franziska U, Wallacher Dirk, Feiler Christian G, Klebe Gerhard, Weiss Manfred S, Wollenhaupt Jan
Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, Macromolecular Crystallography, Albert-Einstein-Straße 15, 12489 Berlin, Germany.
Freie Universität Berlin, Institute for Chemistry and Biochemistry, Structural Biochemistry Group, Takustraße 5, 14195 Berlin, Germany.
J Appl Crystallogr. 2021 Feb 1;54(Pt 1):376-382. doi: 10.1107/S1600576720016477.
In the past two decades, most of the steps in a macromolecular crystallography experiment have undergone tremendous development with respect to speed, feasibility and increase of throughput. The part of the experimental workflow that is still a bottleneck, despite significant efforts, involves the manipulation and harvesting of the crystals for the diffraction experiment. Here, a novel low-cost device is presented that functions as a cover for 96-well crystallization plates. This device enables access to the individual experiments one at a time by its movable parts, while minimizing evaporation of all other experiments of the plate. In initial tests, drops of many typically used crystallization cocktails could be successfully protected for up to 6 h. Therefore, the manipulation and harvesting of crystals is straightforward for the experimenter, enabling significantly higher throughput. This is useful for many macromolecular crystallography experiments, especially multi-crystal screening campaigns.
在过去二十年中，大分子晶体学实验的大部分步骤在速度、可行性和通量增加方面都取得了巨大进展。尽管付出了巨大努力，但实验工作流程中仍然是瓶颈的部分涉及用于衍射实验的晶体的操作和收获。在此，提出了一种新型低成本装置，它用作96孔结晶板的盖子。该装置通过其可移动部件能够一次访问一个单独的实验，同时将板上所有其他实验的蒸发降至最低。在初步测试中，许多常用结晶鸡尾酒的液滴可以成功保护长达6小时。因此，对于实验者来说，晶体的操作和收获变得简单直接，从而能够显著提高通量。这对于许多大分子晶体学实验，尤其是多晶体筛选活动非常有用。
