A nanovolume crystallization robot that creates its crystallization screens on-the-fly
A nanovolume crystallization robot that creates its crystallization screens on-the-fly
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DOI：
10.1107/s0907444905017336
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发表时间：
2005-08-01
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Price, L
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hazes, B;Price, L
蛋白质结晶通常包括初始筛选，然后优化有希望的条件。初始筛选通常使用一组标准的预制结晶混合物，而优化则需要对原始组成进行小扰动的新混合物。高度平行的同步结晶机器人是初始筛选的理想选择，但它们依赖于预制的结晶鸡尾酒。异步结晶机器人可以从储备溶液中产生结晶鸡尾酒，但在实践中，这种能力很少被利用。相反，大规模操作通常使用通用的液体处理机器人来创建优化屏幕，而学术界大多依赖于手动优化。在这里，描述了使用异步结晶机器人来创建定制的结晶鸡尾酒，并设置纳米体积结晶实验，而不牺牲速度或液滴质量。这种方法避免了两个机器人之间硬件、软件和固件的复杂集成，节省了成本和空间。作为一个原则的证明，商业水晶屏幕已被复制与机器人和显示结果几乎是相同的使用实际的商业屏幕。
Protein crystallization generally consists of an initial screen followed by optimization of promising conditions. Whereas the initial screen typically uses a standard set of pre-made crystallization cocktails, optimization requires new cocktails with small perturbations of the original composition. Highly parallel synchronous crystallization robots are ideal for initial screening, but they depend on pre-made crystallization cocktails. Asynchronous crystallization robots can create crystallization cocktails from stock solutions, but in practice this ability is rarely exploited. Instead, large-scale operations typically use a general liquid-handling robot to create optimization screens, whereas academics mostly rely on manual optimization. Here, the use of an asynchronous crystallization robot to create customized crystallization cocktails and set up nanovolume crystallization experiments without a compromise in speed or drop quality is described. This approach avoids the complex integration of hardware, software and dataflow between two robots and saves cost and space. As a proof of principle, a commercial crystal screen has been reproduced with the robot and shows that results are virtually identical to using the actual commercial screen.