A procedure for setting up high-throughput nanolitre crystallization experiments. II. Crystallization results

Journal article

An initial tranche of results from day-to-day use of a robotic system for setting up 100 nl-scale vapour-diffusion sitting-drop protein crystallizations has been surveyed. The database of over 50 unrelated samples represents a snapshot of projects currently at the stage of crystallization trials in Oxford research groups and as such encompasses a broad range of proteins. The results indicate that the nanolitre-scale methodology consistently identifies more crystallization conditions than traditional hand-pipetting-style methods; however, in a number of cases successful scale-up is then problematic. Crystals grown in the initial 100 nl-scale drops have in the majority of cases allowed useful characterization of x-ray diffraction, either in-house or at synchrotron beamlines. For a significant number of projects, full x-ray diffraction data sets have been collected to 3 Å resolution or better (either in-house or at the synchrotron) from crystals grown at the 100 nl scale. To date, five structures have been determined by molecular replacement directly from such data and a further three from scale-up of conditions established at the nanolitre scale.

Authors: Brown, J; Walter, T; Carter, L; Abrescia, N; Aricescu, A

• Publication status: Published
• Journal: JOURNAL OF APPLIED CRYSTALLOGRAPHY
• Volume: 36
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 315-318
• Publication date: 2003-04-01
• DOI: 10.1107/S0021889803002012
• ISSN: 0021-8898
• Language: English