Dear Pietro, Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts. I am presuming that you were thinking about microcapillary feeding to reduce the evaporation of the film on the loop. Yes, this is a problem esp. with drops with high salt or alcohol. If there is a way to feed the loop using microcapillary that would be great. Our current design prepares and places the film on the loop in a closed system.
Our initial results of the crystallization on loops were presented in one of the Advances in Protein Crystallography workshops. Kind regards, Mathews -----Original Message----- From: CCP4 bulletin board [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Pietro Roversi Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2008 1:36 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] Crystals grown directly on loop? Dear Jacob and Mathew, one night at the pub a few months ago a colleague and I had been thinking along similar lines but we were rather envisaging microcapillaries feeding the mother liquor components into the loop at controlled rates from the stem ... expensive hi-tech loops to be sure but maybe not so in a few years should technology stay with us for longer. Time will tell. Good luck with your efforts! Pietro > Dear Jacob, > > We have been working on this for an year or so. We have a paper partially in > the review process. Unfortunately, the referees were not very excited about > the idea. However, we are developing some automation to speed up the time > consuming process of placing the drops on the loops. > > This method seems to have some advantges and some issues in using the known > crystallization conditions. This could also give trouble with solutions > containing volatile compounds. > > Kind regards, > Mathews > > > -----Original Message----- > From: CCP4 bulletin board [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of > Jacob Keller > Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 1:14 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: [ccp4bb] Crystals grown directly on loop? > > Dear crystallographers, > > Has anyone ever tried to grow crystals directly on some kind of mountable > support, such as some kind of loop or film, which could be frozen directly? > I understand that there are some microfluidic plates through which the > crystals can be diffraction-screened, but what about for more conventional, > known crystallization conditions? It seems that this would be a spectacular > way to decrease damages/stresses caused by handling... > > Jacob Keller > > ******************************************* > Jacob Pearson Keller > Northwestern University > Medical Scientist Training Program > Dallos Laboratory > F. Searle 1-240 > 2240 Campus Drive > Evanston IL 60208 > lab: 847.491.2438 > cel: 773.608.9185 > email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > ******************************************* -- Pietro Roversi Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, Oxford University South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3RE, England UK Tel. 0044-1865-275385
