20 years of crystal hits
Published March 14, 2023
A paper entitled 20 years of crystal hits: progress and promise in ultrahigh-throughput crystallization screening by Miranda L. Lynch, M. Elizabeth Snell, Stephen A. Potter, Edward H. Snell, Sarah E. J. Bowman has been published in Acta Cryst D. Volume 79, pages 198-205.
The paper notes that diffraction-based structural methods contribute a large fraction of the biomolecular structural models available, providing a critical understanding of macromolecular architecture. However, these methods require crystallization of the target molecule, which remains a primary bottleneck in crystal-based structure determination. It described the National High-Throughput Crystallization Center at Hauptman–Woodward Medical Research Institute and its focus on overcoming obstacles to crystallization through a combination of robotics-enabled high-throughput screening and advanced imaging to increase the success of finding crystallization conditions. Lessons learned from over 20 years of operation of our high-throughput crystallization services are discussed together with current experimental pipelines, instrumentation, imaging capabilities and software for image viewing and crystal scoring are detailed. . For the full paper, click here.