Dear SnowDeer, Just how small is too small? If you have access to a microfocus beamline you might find you can collect decent diffraction data from crystals with dimensions in the single digit microns. Fishing tiny crystals is difficult, but something like the MicroMesh "tennis racquet" mounts can help. Having multiple crystals on the same pin is in fact a rather helpful way of screening lots of samples. Please don't discount your crystals _only_ because they are small!
Shameless plug: there is a review on microcrystallography here that you might find interesting. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0889311X.2010.527964 Best wishes -- David On 5 September 2011 09:06, SnowDeer <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear All: > > Recently I am working on a protein which can already grow nice pyramid-like > crystals after the condition was optimized, while the crystals are too small > to be picked up. The crystals grew quite fast and densely, so I tried to put > 100ul paraffin oil inside the 600ul reservoir solution or put the plate > under 16 degree to slow down the evaporation, while the crystals were still > the same. I also tried macro or micro seeding with or without the paraffin > oil. Macroseeding would give a larger crystal (not very nice) with many > small crystals in the drop even I washed the seeds carefully. For > microseeding, the same small crystals grew. > > I don't have many experiences in crystallography, so I have no idea how to > make it grow bigger... > > Any suggestion is most welcome. > > Thanks. > SnowDeer >
