Abstract
An emulsion-based serial crystallographic technology has been developed, in which single crystals are grown in nanolitre-sized droplets inside an X-ray semi-transparent microfluidic chip exploiting a negative feedback mechanism. Diffraction data are measured, one crystal at a time, from a series of room-temperature crystals stored in the chip, and a 93% complete data set is obtained by merging single diffraction frames taken from different unoriented crystals to solve the structure of glucose isomerase to 2.1 Å.
An emulsion-based serial crystallographic technology has been developed, in which nanolitre-sized droplets of protein solution are encapsulated in oil and stabilized by surfactant. Once the first crystal in a drop is nucleated, the small volume generates a negative feedback mechanism that lowers the supersaturation. This mechanism is exploited to produce one crystal per drop. Diffraction data are measured, one crystal at a time, from a series of room-temperature crystals stored on an X-ray semi-transparent microfluidic chip, and a 93% complete data set is obtained by merging single diffraction frames taken from different unoriented crystals. As proof of concept, the structure of glucose isomerase was solved to 2.1 Å, demonstrating the feasibility of high-throughput serial X-ray crystallography using synchrotron radiation.