Improve Your Xtal Diffraction:

Try the New HC1!

Dear Colleague,

At the EMBL-Grenoble, under EU FP6 Integrated project SPINE2-Complexes, we have been developing a humidity control device (HC1) used to improve the diffraction quality of macromolecular crystals. This device can be easily placed on a home source setup or a synchrotron beamline. It has been tested with numerous crystals and the results so far are very promising. In order to further asses the capabilities of the new device we need to test as many proteins as possible. This is why we would like to offer the opportunity of testing your crystals with this new dehydration device.

So if .....

- you have poorly diffracting crystals that are close to useful resolution

- you would like to push your good crystals to even higher resolution

- your crystals do not cryo-protect well but diffract at room temperature

- your crystals change space group upon binding compounds or due to environmental changes

- you have a high solvent content and/or areas of loose packing in your crystal

- or you have managed to improve your crystals by dehydrating but it is difficult to monitor and/or reproduce the results

… then the HC1 may be just what you need.

We are looking for people who will share some of their protein or crystals in order for us to test them with the HC1 at the ESRF. We will apply for beam time and perform dehydration experiments. If a suitable crystal is found then it will be frozen and a dataset will be collected for you.

In order to evaluate the chance of success with the new humidity control system we need certain information. This information will be confidential. The more information we have the better the chances of finding a suitable test crystal. Please complete a submission form in either MS Office 03 or PDF format. Feel free to add any extra information you think is useful. For help see additional notes at the end of the documents.

Once you have filled in the questionnaire either save it or convert it to PDF and send it to weatherembl.fr. If you find it easier, print it, fill it in by hand, and then send it to the following address. Please feel free to contact me if you require any further information.

Juan Sanchez-Weatherby