Hi Sebastiano, I think the term "vitrified crystal" could be understood as a very nice oxymoron (http://www.oxymoronlist.com/), but it is essentially self-contradictory and not technically correct.
As Ethan said, "vitrify" means "turn into glass". Now, a glass state is a disordered solid state by definition, then it can't be a crystal. A vitrified crystal would be a crystal which has lost all three-dimensional ordering, pretty much like the material one gets when using the wrong "cryo-protectant". What one usually does is to soak the crystal in a "cryo-protectant" and then flash-freeze the resulting material, hoping that the crystal structure will be preserved, while the rest remains disordered in a solid state (vitrified), so that it won't produce a diffraction pattern by itself, and will hold the crystal in a fixed position (very convenient for data collection). Moreover, I would say that clarifying a material is vitrified when subjected to liquid N2 temperatures would be required only if you were working with some liquid solvent which might remain in the liquid phase at that temperature, instead of the usual solid disordered state, but this is never the case with protein crystals. So, I vote for "frozen crystal".- Javier PS: that comment by James Stroud "I forgot to mention that if any dictionary is an authority on the very cold, it would be the Penguin dictionary.", is hilarious, we need a "Like" button in the CCP4bb list! -- Javier M. Gonzalez Protein Crystallography Station Bioscience Division Los Alamos National Laboratory TA-43, Building 1, Room 172-G Mailstop M888 Phone: (505) 667-9376 On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Craig Bingman <cbing...@biochem.wisc.edu>wrote: > "cryopreserved" > > It says that the crystals were transferred to cryogenic temperatures in an > attempt to increase their lifetime in the beam, and avoids all of the other > problems with all of the other language described. > > I was really trying to stay out of this, because I understand what > everyone means with all of their other word choices. > > On Nov 15, 2012, at 2:07 PM, James Stroud wrote: > > > Isn't "cryo-cooled" redundant? > > > > James > > > > On Nov 15, 2012, at 11:34 AM, Phil Jeffrey wrote: > > > >> Perhaps it's an artisan organic locavore fruit cake. > >> > >> Either way, your *crystal* is not vitrified. The solvent in your > crystal might be glassy but your protein better still hold crystalline > order (cf. ice) or you've wasted your time. > >> > >> Ergo, "cryo-cooled" is the description to use. > >> > >> Phil Jeffrey > >> Princeton > >> > >> On 11/15/12 1:14 PM, Nukri Sanishvili wrote: > >>> s: An alternative way to avoid the argument and discussion all together > >>> is to use "cryo-cooled". > >>> Tim: You go to a restaurant, spend all that time and money and order a > >>> fruitcake? > >>> Cheers, > >>> N. > >>> >
