RIKEN structural genomics beamlines at SPring-8/development of sample auto-changing system

Beamline Scheduling Software: administration software for automatic operation of the RIKEN structural genomics beamlines at SPring-8

“…On the other hand, the frame grabber of the CCD and IP detectors run on personal computers, which are provided by hardware vendors. The hardware and server of SPACE have been independently developed at the RIKEN Structural Genomics Beamlines (Ida et al, 2002;. It is one of the essential tasks for BSS to set up a unified environment from the different computer systems involved.…”

“…The target of the beamline construction is the high-throughput data collection of protein crystals to contribute to structural genomics research, which leads to the accumulation of a large number of protein structures. The beamline is equipped with a sample-changer robot, named SPACE (SPring-8 Precise Automatic Cryo-sample Exchanger), and a sample database system (Ida et al, 2002; for performing the automated data collections for a large number of protein crystals with maximum efficiency of beam-time use (Abola et al, 2000). For automatic operation of such a beamline, development of administrative software to provide unified control of beamline instruments in accordance with experimental schedule is indispensable (McPhillips et al, 2002;Pohl et al, 2004).…”

Sample management system for a vast amount of frozen crystals at SPring-8

“…To make it possible to mount sample pins exactly, the RIKEN Structural Genomics Beamlines developed the sample management system, employing a new concept of sample pins and the sample handling robot SPACE (Ida et al, 2002). The sample pin is equipped with screw threads for mechanical fastening when it is mounted on the goniometer.…”

Automation of the EMBL Hamburg protein crystallography beamline BW7B

“…Here, the robot can select samples from different positions in a storage dewar. In contrast, the systems developed by Abbott Laboratories (Muchmore et al, 2000), at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Grenoble, and the ESRF (EMBL/ESRF) (Cipriani, 2003), at DORIS (Karain et al, 2002), the Advanced Light Source (ALS) (Earnest et al, 2002;Rupp et al, 2002) and at SPring-8 (Yamamoto, 2002;Ida et al, 2002) are based on ®xed custom-made transport systems where the cryofrozen samples are moved in the dewar or the entire dewar is moved to the loading/unloading position. In the meantime, commercial sample changers produced by three different companies have become available: the ACTOR by Rigaku/MSC, developed in collaboration with Abbott Laboratories (http://www.msc.com), and BruNo by BrukerNonius (http://www.bruker-axs.com) are based on industrial six-axis robots whereas the cryogenic sample changer by MarResearch consists of a very compact transport mechanism specially designed for the Mar desktop beamline Dtb (http:// www.marresearch.com).…”