BTW, a l-o-n-g time ago, I worked on a project with crystals that only grew in the cold room. BUT... we found out that the crystals could in fact be transferred to a regular lab under condition that you warmed them up very slowly. So I would harvest the crystals into capillaries (this was before "cryo") and put them in a petri dish, then put the dish in a cooler with several glass bottles of buffer and put the cooler in the lab. Then you wait. This worked. If you did not warm them up slowly, the crystals would be ruined. Also, we never tried to take the trays in which the crystals were grown out of the cold room, i.e. when the crystals are still "swimming".
Just some "old data" that might apply to other projects. Mark -----Original Message----- From: Radisky, Evette S., Ph.D., Ph.D. <[email protected]> To: CCP4BB <[email protected]> Sent: Sat, Jul 14, 2012 7:20 am Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] harvesting in cold room (was: cryo for high salt crystal) As I recall, I used to wear latex gloves, add extra padding to the handle end of the wand (and other tools) with bits of tubing, and take my tools out of the cold room every 20 min or so to de-ice and dry them. I didn’t really have a choice about the cold room because it was the only place my crystals would grow, and my crystallization solution was 20% isopropanol which was too volatile to work with outside the cold room anyway. Evette S. Radisky, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Mayo Clinic Cancer Center Griffin Cancer Research Building, Rm 310 4500 San Pablo Road Jacksonville, FL 32224 (904) 953-6372 From: CCP4 bulletin board [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Bosch, Juergen Sent: Friday, July 13, 2012 8:27 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] harvesting in cold room (was: cryo for high salt crystal) This is a very interesting topic I have to say. But what I missed in this discussion is the pain you go through when freezing in the cold room. As the name implies it's supposed to be cold (most of the times). But that's not too much of an issue as you can dress up accordingly. The problem I always had was freezing up of the <advertisement> Hampton Magnetic Wand </advertisement> and icing up towards your fingertips after some time when moisture from the cold room condenses and freezes. I hate wearing gloves when handling crystals so there was not much of a skin protection. How do you guys solve this problem ? Jürgen ...................... Jürgen Bosch Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute 615 North Wolfe Street, W8708 Baltimore, MD 21205 Office: +1-410-614-4742 Lab: +1-410-614-4894 Fax: +1-410-955-2926 http://lupo.jhsph.edu
