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APPLICATIONS
OF TECHNOLOGY:
- Protein
characterization at synchrotron facilities (primary
application) and laboratories.
- Wide
range of application, from large-scale screening
and analysis of thousands of samples per year
to experimental processing of a few samples
per day.
- Potential
users include pharmaceutical
companies, emerging genomic and proteomic companies,
universities, and national laboratories
ADVANTAGES:
- Significant increases in throughput and reliability
- Faster sample mounting and alignment
- Reduction of human error
- Greater precision and stability in alignment
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ABSTRACT:
Joseph Jaklevic, Thomas Earnest, and other scientists
at Berkeley Lab have invented an integrated robotic
crystal mounting and alignment system for high-throughput
biological crystallography. This instrument facilitates
the remote and unattended mounting and alignment
of protein crystals for x-ray diffraction analysis.
This invention successfully addresses several
major problems that have plagued the field of
protein crystallography, including the necessity
for storage of the samples in liquid nitrogen
and maintaining the samples near liquid nitrogen
temperature (–164°C) throughout the mounting,
alignment, and data-acquisition processes. The
instrument consists of 4 major components oriented
toward the manipulation of protein crystals. The
precision and stability of the alignment can be
maintained within a few microns.
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Part
of the graphical user interface used to select
samples in the Dewar and mount/unmount them
is shown on the left side of the photo above.
The crystal centering window is on the right.
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Current procedures are largely manual, requiring
constant operator intervention at the measurement
station and causing synchrotron beam time to be
lost during screening because of crystal manipulation
and alignment. When the hardware components of
this invention are operated as a fully integrated
system, remote sample mounting and alignment of
individual samples can be achieved in less than
20 seconds with minimal operator involvement.
This compares to roughly five minutes per sample
manually. The ability to perform these tasks remotely
and automatically provides the opportunity for
significant increases in throughput and reliability
for large-scale protein characterization.
This invention is a successful response to NIH
and DOE recommendations for designing automated
systems for use at synchrotron facilities.
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