CrystalMation™: Protein crystal growth automation process
Rigaku's CrystalMation is a fully integrated platform for protein crystallization, automating every step from custom screen making to crystallization trial imaging and analysis. Due to its modular design, CrystalMation can be configured to meet a wide range of requirements and grow with your needs. Each of the innovative workstations is available as a stand-alone instrument or in combination with one or more additional components.
CrystalMation, consisting of crystallization screen creation, plate setup, reservoir and protein dispense, plate storage and handling, image inspection and scoring, one-click optimization and software applications for experiment management, streamlines the crystallization process and offers life science researchers a complete solution from protein to crystal.
Such throughput makes sampling of larger and finer crystallization space possible. While the batch load with seamlessly integrated robots that are connected through a central database server offers a true performance of a high-throughput crystallization pipeline without user intervention, experiments can be ran independently and manually on each individual robot, allowing the parameters to be finely tuned to resolve difficult cases. CrystalMation allows users the capability to design and launch experiments on the fly that are subsequently tracked by our featured crystallization database software, CrystalTrak. The hits can then be identified for harvesting or follow-up.
The fusion of science and technology reflected in CrystalMation makes it ideal for the structural genomics initiatives and the pharmaceutical industry that require high-throughput crystallography, where significant number of structures of protein with or without ligand need to be determined. Large scale, systematic and functional tests performed on the system indicate reproducibility and efficiency of crystal growth as well as new hit generation. In addition, liquid dispensing is consistent and reproducible, even at low volumes and a high drop-on-drop rate is consistently achieved. Inspections of all plates are completed within individually specified schedules and automatically ranked and stored in the database.
Features
- Crystallization screen making
- Crystallization plate setup at a rate of 110 96-well plates in SBS format per 8-hours working day
- Automated delivery of lab supplies and plates
- Automatic sealing of source blocks and crystallization plates
- Plate storage with large capacity of up to 696 SBS plates and automatic retrieval
- Customizable scheduling and automatic image inspection
- Automatic crystal ranking or manual scoring functionality
- Ease of use for multiple experiment launch in batch mode
- One-click optimization design
- Viewing of centralized image and chemistry database
- Crystallization data-mining and analysis tools
- Barcode reading and tracking