A new view on crystal harvesting
Category
Published on
Type
journal-article
Author
Joseph R. Luft and Thomas D. Grant and Jennifer R. Wolfley and Edward H. Snell
Citation
Luft, J.R. et al., 2014. A new view on crystal harvesting. J Appl Crystallogr, 47(3), pp.1158–1161. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1107/s1600576714008899.
Abstract
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 ofSaccharomyces cerevisiaeglutaminyl-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.
DOI
Funding
NSF-STC Biology with X-ray Lasers (NSF-1231306)