Hi there one thing I did to get more space for needles in a drop was to make 'book end' coverslips. Your take a plastic covership and with a razor blade you cut obliquely into the plastic to make a 'flap' of the plastic. Then you lever it up to vertical to give a projecting vertical surface. You can then apply the drop to the angle between the flap and the coverslip. This supports the drop so that it does not flatten so much during equilibration. Making the cut takes a bit of trial and error but the plastic coverslips are not that expensive. It certainly gave me some chunkier needles and gave them space to grow upwards. Otherwise they flattened down as the droplet flattened with equilibration and often they 'glued' themselves to the horizontal surface.
Hope it helps Martyn Martyn Symmons Cambridge ________________________________ From: Frederic VELLIEUX <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, 14 November 2011, 22:24 Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] [off topic] Control of crystals' direction and position in the drop. Hi, Your email mentions "drop". What about trying another technique where you do not have "drops", such as the liquid interface diffusion method (in capillaries), or the use of dialysis ? Crystallisation under oil (injection of the 2 components under "oil") could also be tried. Fred > Message du 14/11/11 22:15 > De : "Nian Huang" > A : [email protected] > Copie à : > Objet : [ccp4bb] [off topic] Control of crystals' direction and position in > the drop. > > Dear All, > Does anybody find a way to control a crystal's positioning in the drop? I > have needle shaped crystals. What I found out is that the vertical > positioned crystals always grow much thicker than the crystals laying > flatly. But unfortunately, it is a completely random event and only 1% > crystals can appear vertically. I have tried different formats of plates > and equilibration techniques w/o much success. Any suggestion is highly > appreciated. > > Nian Huang, Ph.D. > UT Southwestern Medical Center >
