Crystallization Unit

TRAY SETTING and visualization

Fifteen commercial screening kits [.pdf, 10 Kb] are available for crystallization experiments.
We suggest performing the initial screens in 96-well plates with the PACT and JCSG+ suites from Qiagen, as they provide a minimal screening strategy to systematically analyse the precipitation behaviour of a sample over a set of conditions designed to maximise the success of crystallization (J.Newman et all; Acta Cryst D 2005).
Sitting-drop vapour diffusion experiments are set up in 96-well plates using a Cartesian Honeybee nano-dispenser, with drop volumes ranging between 200 nl and 1 μl, in a 1:1 sample:reservoir ratio unless differently specified by the user.
Our default program for crystallization experiments uses drops of 100 nl of sample + 100 nl of reservoir, therefore 15 μl of sample are required for each 96-well plate experiment. In addition to the theoretical total volume, we need another 5 μl of sample as a safety margin.
Default 96-well plates are Greiner CQ, Innovadine SD-2 plates are available upon request.
For 24-well plates (Hampton VDX pre-greased) 26-30 μl of samples are needed.

To optimize an initial crystallization condition, you can design customized follow-up experiments with solutions chosen from our list of stock solutions [.pdf, 13 Kb] or from our chemicals list [.pdf, 50 Kb].
You can decide to carry out the optimization with the nano-dispenser in 96-well plates or manually in 24-well plates. In both cases, you might be asked to participate in the preparation of the experiments if needed to speed-up sample processing.
Crystallization experiments can be stored either at 20°C or 5°C.