Hi, I have been offline for medical reasons for a few weeks… Trawling through my ~1000 emails and saw this thread…
Have faced this problem many times, some crystals seem to like to grow from the interface of skin and solution phase and are therefore inherently adherent to the skin. Adding additives to stop skin formation changes the dynamics of vapour equilibration and may be removing the preferred nucleation surface, which can then reduce crystal quality rather than improving it e.g. either no crystals or a tendency to obtain showers of smaller crystals. You may be able to ameliorate this by using larger drops with lower surface area : volume ratio and serial dilution of seeds, you may then find conditions that give more good crystals not entrained with the skin. Re-solubilising the skin after crystal growth is however often the simplest approach. For this I can recommend testing the Cryosol screen from Molecular Dimensions, these multi-component organic solvent mixtures are both excellent for cryoprotection and also very good at resolubilising skin from PEG system crystallisations. https://moleculardimensions.com/en/category/cryoprotectant-screens Good luck, take care, Dr Charlie Nichols Charles River Laboratories From: CCP4 bulletin board <[email protected]> On Behalf Of amit gaur Sent: 16 September 2025 21:58 To: [email protected] Subject: [ccp4bb] Skin around crystal WARNING: This message was sent by an external party. Report suspicious messages via the “Report Phishing” button in Outlook. Hi everyone, I am facing a problem during crystal freezing. My crystals are surrounded by skin and not separating from skin during crystal mounting. It seems that crystals are embedded in the skin. Has anyone experienced a similar situation and handled this situation? Dr. Amit Ga i This message needs your attention * This is their first email to your company. Powered by Mimecast CGBANNERINDICATOR Hi everyone, I am facing a problem during crystal freezing. My crystals are surrounded by skin and not separating from skin during crystal mounting. It seems that crystals are embedded in the skin. Has anyone experienced a similar situation and handled this situation? Dr. Amit Gaur, Department of Biomedical Science, College of Medicine, Florida State University, 1115 W Call St, Tallahassee, FL,32304 ________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/WA-JISC.exe?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1<https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/WA-JISC.exe?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1> ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/WA-JISC.exe?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1 This message was issued to members of www.jiscmail.ac.uk/CCP4BB, a mailing list hosted by www.jiscmail.ac.uk, terms & conditions are available at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/
