A new view on crystal harvesting

By Joseph Luft1, Thomas D. Grant, Jennifer R. Wolfley, Edward Snell2

1. Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute 2. Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute - SUNY Buffalo

See also

No results found.

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)