Using sound pulses to solve the crystal-harvesting bottleneck.
Crystal harvesting has proven to be difficult to automate and remains the rate-limiting step for many structure-determination and high-throughput screening projects. This has resulted in crystals being prepared more rapidly than they can be harvested for X-ray data collection. Fourth-generation synchrotrons will support extraordinarily rapid rates of data acquisition, putting further pressure on the crystal-harvesting bottleneck. Here, a simple solution is reported in which crystals can be acoustically harvested from slightly modified MiTeGen In Situ-1 crystallization plates. This technique uses an acoustic pulse to eject each crystal out of its crystallization well, through a short air column and onto a micro-mesh (improving on previous work, which required separately grown crystals to be transferred before harvesting). Crystals can be individually harvested or can be serially combined with a chemical library such as a fragment library.
['Samara|Yasmin N|YN|', 'Brennan|Haley M|HM|', 'McCarthy|Liam|L|', 'Bollard|Mary T|MT|', 'Laspina|Denise|D|', 'Wlodek|Jakub M|JM|', 'Campos|Stefanie L|SL|', 'Natarajan|Ramya|R|', 'Gofron|Kazimierz|K|', 'McSweeney|Sean|S|', 'Soares|Alexei S|AS|', 'Leroy|Ludmila|L|0000-0002-4272-0298']
D000162:Acoustics D003460:Crystallization D004867:Equipment Design D011506:Proteins D054852:Small Molecule Libraries D013048:Specimen Handling D017356:Synchrotrons D013997:Time Factors
crystal harvesting automation high-throughput screening acoustic droplet ejection crystal mounting crystallography drug discovery microcrystals