Crystallisation and X-ray

The LMB’s infrastructure for crystallography includes robotic stations for formulating and setting up extensive crystallisation trials, and X-ray generators to screen the crystals and collect diffraction data.

The crystallisation facility enables extensive crystallisation screening and optimisation by providing crystallisation reagents and trays, instrumentation and expertise to an in-house base of more than 70 users. The crystallisation facility has 11 robots for liquid-handling, which enable high throughput screening by the individual LMB scientists and virtually all crystallography projects within the LMB make use of the facility.

There are two X-ray generators in this facility: a Rigaku FR-E+ SuperBright generator and a Rigaku Micromax-007HF generator, each equipped with two detectors. An Actor crystal-handling robot enables automated screening and data collection of up to 80 samples.

LMB researchers also have access to the Diamond synchrotron in Harwell and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble as well as other synchrotrons for specialised purposes.

The Crystallisation facility is run by Fabrice Gorrec under the scientific oversight of Jan Löwe. The X-ray facility is run by Minmin Yu, under the guidance of Andrew Leslie.