Crystallization screens
Initial crystallization screening will be carried out using the two liquid dispensing automates available at the laboratory.
The Tecan Genesis is used for dispensing mother liquor solutions in the crystallisation well reservoir (100-150µl) and setting up high volume crystallisation trials (0.5µl to 2µl). If you plan to use this robot, you will need 80µl of protein for one 96 wells plate at one concentration.
The Cartesian Microsys is used to set up low volume crystallisation drops in plates prefilled by the Tecan robot. Routinely, volumes of 100 nl are used for both the protein and the precipitant. In this case, only 30µl of protein are needed for one 96 wells plate at one concentration.
All screenings will be in 96 well plates (sitting drops) and 3 different conditions (protein concentration or ligands) can be tested per well. We are currently using the following crystallisation kits from Nextal® (Click on kits to see a description of each kit condition) :
Experiments will be followed making use of the crystallization visualization robot BIOSTORE (Biotom).
Delivery: same day if experiment planned 10 days in advance.
Price: 90 € / plate independently of the number of drops and wells used.
Contact: Marc.Graille@ibbmc.u-psud.fr
Optimization
Optimization of protein crystals is a notoriously hard and lengthy process. Several steps of this process can be automatized using a strategy developed by the YSG group. Bioinformatics and biochemical analysis of the protein can also redefine a protein domain more suitable for crystallization experiments.
As experiments have to be planned and designed differently for each protein and require a lot of user intervention and data mining, the protein optimization will only be considered after analysis of every individual protein.
Price: Preliminary analysis of protein crystal optimization project: 100-600 €
Contact: Marc.Graille@ibbmc.u-psud.fr