University of Heidelberg

Crystallization Facility

Crystallization Service

Initial Screening

Identifying one or more initial crystallization conditions is the first step on the way to high-quality protein crystals. For this purpose the platform offers 20 "crystallization screens", i.e. compilations of 96 mixtures of various reagents like salts, polymers, and buffers.

Optimization

In order to obtain well diffracting high-quality crystals, it is often necessary to refine the initial crystallization conditions by adding additional chemicals to the inital mixture or by modification of the mixture recipe.

Monitoring

Crystallization plates are stored at 18°C or 4°C and automatically imaged according to a customisable schedule. The images can be inspected from your own computer via the CrystalTrakWeb interface or at the platform computers.

Required Sample Volume

The minimal sample volume per crystallization drop is 100 nl, i.e. 10 μl per plate. In order to avoid aspiration of air, we would like to have an additional 5 μl of sample.

Sample volume per drop
Sample volume per plate
Total for N plates (μl)
100 nl
10 μl
N x 10 + 5
200 nl
20 μl
N x 20 + 5
500 nl
50 μl
N x 50 + 5

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