Hi Len In every case that I know of this problem has been solved by working under oil. The oil becomes saturated with the volatiles, and it prevents crystals from doing backstroke, breaststroke or front crawl during harvesting.
The most convenient way to get going is to dispense the wells without the volatile solvents, then allow solvents to difuse through the oil and into the drops. We suggest our old Vapor Batch plates, and you should place the same concentration of the solvent that you want in the drops into the large "moat" around the plate. If you put in higher concentrations you may dehydrate your drops :-( A very nice feature is that you can set up e.g. a random screen, then try soaking in one or more volatile solvents if nothing grows in the first round. The approach was invented by Lesley Haire, and you can find her presentation at http://www.douglas.co.uk/winner1.htm See also Mortuza, Gulnahar B., et al. "High-resolution structure of a retroviral capsid hexameric amino-terminal domain." *Nature* 431.7007 (2004): 481-485. The plates look like this: http://www.douglas.co.uk/products.htm#Vapor Batch Plates We'll send you some sample plates to try. Best wishes, Patrick On 12 June 2015 at 22:11, Thomas, Leonard M. <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi All, > > We have gotten some very nicely formed crystals out of a couple of > different volatile solvents recently. Besides looking for something easier > to work in does anybody have any tips on handling crystals from these types > of solvents. It is very hard to loop a crystal while it is doing the > backstroke in the well with all of its buddies. > > Thanks in advance. > Len > > Leonard M. Thomas Ph.D. > Macromolecular Crystallography Laboratory Manager > University of Oklahoma > Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry > Stephenson Life Sciences Research Center > 101 Stephenson Parkway > Norman, OK 73019 > 405-325-1126 > [email protected] > http://barlywine.chem.ou.edu > http://structuralbiology.ou.edu -- [email protected] Douglas Instruments Ltd. Douglas House, East Garston, Hungerford, Berkshire, RG17 7HD, UK Directors: Peter Baldock, Patrick Shaw Stewart http://www.douglas.co.uk Tel: 44 (0) 148-864-9090 US toll-free 1-877-225-2034 Regd. England 2177994, VAT Reg. GB 480 7371 36
