Automation of the EMBL Hamburg protein crystallography beamline BW7B

Abstract

The EMBL Hamburg Outstation currently operates five synchrotron beamlines for protein crystallography. The strongest of these beamlines is the fixed-energy beamline BW7B which receives about half of the radiation (1.5 mrad) from a 56 pole wiggler located at the DORIS III storage ring at the German synchrotron facility DESY. Over the last years this beamline has been upgraded and equipped with a fully automated crystallographic end-station and a robotic sample changer. The current set-up allows for remote operation, controlled from the user's area, of sample mounting, centering and data collection of pre-frozen crystals mounted in Hampton-type cryovials on magnetic caps. New software and intuitive graphical user interfaces have been developed that control the complete beamline set-up. Furthermore, algorithms for automatic sample centering based on UV fluorescence are being developed and combined with strategy programs in order to further automate the collection of entire diffraction data sets.

Autofluorescence Detection in Analytical Chemistry and Biochemistry

“…Crystallography data suggest that the employed UV exposures do not generate detectable structural damage. Such a setup is installed on protein crystallography beamline BW7B for automatic sample mounting and centering based on native fluorescence imaging at the EMBL outstation in Hamburg, Germany (128). UV intrinsic fluorescence imaging of protein crystals has also been described to work effectively as a noninvasive method for identifying and distinguishing protein crystals from nonprotein crystals; for example, slat crystals (129).…”

Micro-crystallography comes of age

“…Additionally, sample automounting saves time as large numbers of crystals generally must be screened in order to find a high-quality crystal or to identify regions of a crystal or field of crystals with suitable diffraction [37,38,39]. Robotic systems for sample handling have become standard equipment at most crystallography beamlines, and a variety of micro-crystallography-compatible sample changers have been developed [40,41,42,43,44,45]. …”

Automation and Remote Synchrotron Data Collection

“…It should ensure that the users have access to a beam that is stable in both intensity and position during their experiments, without having to carry out manual alignment procedures [10][11][12].…”