Development of a technology for automation and miniaturization of protein crystallization

The usage of standard 96 well microplates for the screening of crystallizat ion conditions of recombinant proteins offers several advantages when compa red to commonly used crystallization plate formats. The adoption of robotic technology for plate and glass slide preparation within a 'hanging drop' v apour diffusion crystallization experiment enables to work with an increase d throughput at reduced costs. In addition to commercial pipetting devices with a 96-channel aspirator/dispenser, solenoid ink-jet technology was appl ied to form 250 nl droplets with a diameter of similar to1 mm. This allows miniaturization of crystallization screening set-ups with an estimated ten- fold cost reduction when compared to commonly used 24 well plates. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.