Hi Becky, we had some plastic capillaries at SGPP, not sure though if you can buy them. These were used for the Acapella Robot to setup crystallization in capillaries and have the possibility to freeze the crystals within those capillaries. For a couple of proteins we did get some diffraction but nothing that I could collect on. I tested some sitting drop grown SeMet crystals from junpeng Deng if these plastic capillaries would allow anomalous data collection at the SeMet edge and the anomalous signal was not great but there. Having said that his crystals typically diffracted to about 1.8 Å or so and the dataset from plastic capillaries collected I believe at ALD 8.21 or maybe SSRL 9-2 diffracted to about 2.5Å. It could have been crystal handling as those crystals were usually to big for the capillary diameter or somehow damping of the signal through the plastic.
Let me try and find some more information, but you could try and see if you find something relevant either on www.sgpp.org<http://www.sgpp.org> or www.msgpp.org<http://www.msgpp.org> Jürgen On Feb 17, 2011, at 12:03 PM, R Conners, Biochemistry wrote: Dear all, We are working on a Category 3 protein which must be contained so we have our crystals mounted in a loop and then covered with a plastic Mitegen cover which is glued in place. We're currently collecting at room temperature, but wondered if anyone has any experience of using a contained system at low temperatures? Any attempts I've had so far at freezing through either the plastic or a glass capillary have resulted in formation of ice on the surface so it is not even possible to see the crystal to centre it. Best wishes, Becky ------------------------------------------------- Dr Becky Conners School of Biochemistry University of Bristol, UK http://www.bris.ac.uk/biochemistry/brady r.conn...@bristol.ac.uk 0117 3312149 ...................... Jürgen Bosch Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute 615 North Wolfe Street, W8708 Baltimore, MD 21205 Phone: +1-410-614-4742 Lab: +1-410-614-4894 Fax: +1-410-955-3655 http://web.mac.com/bosch_lab/
