title: Automated mounting, centering and screening of crystals for high-throughput protein crystallography.
abstract: A fully automated system for screening protein crystals for X-ray diffraction analysis has been designed and is being installed on the beamline BW6 at DORIS in Hamburg, Germany. The system includes robotic mounting of flash-frozen crystals from a storage dewar, centering and alignment of the sample both by optical and X-ray (scattering and fluorescence) techniques, assessment of the diffraction quality of the sample, and SAD/MAD or non-conventional diffraction data acquisition with high-throughput data rates. The system covers all experimental steps required for protein x-ray structure analysis and provides a powerful means for structural genomics projects.
mesh_terms: D018360:Crystallography, X-Ray / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D005453:Fluorescence; D005858:Germany; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry*; D012371:Robotics; D012542:Scattering, Radiation; D014965:X-Rays
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins