LCP Tools >> In meso Crystallization Robot

An in meso crystallization robot was developed in 2004 by the Caffrey group at the Ohio State University (Cherezov et al., 2004; Cherezov & Caffrey, 2007). It is based on a liquid dispensing station Xantus from Sias. The robot can automatically set up crystallization trials in Glass sandwich plates using 20 – 50 nL of protein laden LCP and 1 μL of precipitant solution per trial. Setting up a 96-well plate takes ~9 min (robot with 4 pipette tips) or ~6 min (robot with 8 pipette tips). The robot is capable to dispense as little as 500 pL of LCP under controlled conditions (Cherezov & Caffrey, 2006).
Similar automated LCP dispensing technology has recently been implemented in several commercial crystallization robots:

Flexus Crystal IMP from Anachem/Gilson

Gryphon LCP from Art Robbins/Rigaku

NT8-LCP from Formulatrix

Mosquito LCP from TTP Labtech

ProCrys Meso from Zinsser-Analytic

REFERENCES:

Cherezov, V., Peddi, A., Muthusubramaniam, L., Zheng, Y.F., and Caffrey, M. (2004). A robotic system for crystallizing membrane and soluble proteins in lipidic mesophases. Acta Cryst. D 60: 1795-1807. >>

Cherezov, V., and Caffrey, M. (2006). Picolitre-scale crystallization of membrane proteins. J. Appl. Cryst. 39: 604-606. >>

Cherezov, V., and Caffrey, M. (2007). Miniaturization and automation for high-throughput membrane protein crystallization in lipidic mesophases. In: Protein crystallization strategies for structural genomics. N.E. Chayen, editor. International University Line: San Diego. >>

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