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one year ago I tested several crystallization robots and in
particular the Honeybee 961 from Cartesian.
We were rather disappointed by the performances of the machine. for
several reasons:
-the dispensing part of the protein is really a poor design. it is
prone to clogging.
-the 96-well head is quite a sensitive piece of work and if the
plate is misplaced you will collapse and crash all 96 needles
against the surface of the plate at once. you can imagine what is
to follow after this kind of "accident"
-the machine is very "thirsty", it need gallons or liters of water
to clean because there is no disposable part so if you want to
avoid cross contamination with proteases or rnases (we handle RNAs)
this can be a concern especially if you have multiple users.
Now if you are looking for a very reliable, clean and user-
resistant and user-friendly machine, I would recommend you consider
the Mosquito from TTP Labetch (they are based in UK). We bought one
one year ago and more than 1o labs at UCSF use it successfully with
all kind of targets: proteins, RNAs and membrane proteins. it works
very well in hanging drops and sitting drops.
Although I am the happy long-term user of a Mosquito - which is an
excellent machine by all means - I think that much of the Honeybee
criticism is undeserved. The bottom line is that in our tests one
year ago it worked really well, and that was a tortured demo model,
not optimized etc etc. I agree with the maintenance considerations
(but lots depend on how you run your lab) but don't forget that the
honeybee will dispense your well solutions as well, not only the
drops - to say one thing.
For more info take a look at http://www.bioxhit.org
It already has some overview of what people do for HTP
crystallization, and we will post the comparative tests we did
between five machines anytime now (next week most likely they will be
there)
Tassos
