Instruments available at our facility
Crystal Phoenix
Protein crystallography dispenser for sitting drop, hanging drop and microbatch reactions. The speed of dispensing the screen and protein eliminates the problem of evaporation even when dispensing as little as 100 nanoliters. Both the 96 syringe head and the nano dispenser have a large volume range. The 96 syringes have flexible needles that will not be damaged in the event of a misplaced plate. The 96 head can dispense from 100 nanoliters to 100 microliters, and the nano dispenser has a range of 100 nanoliters to over 10 microliters.
Mosquito HTS
Mosquito HTS is the nanolitre liquid handler, which offers highly accurate and precise multichannel pipetting from 25 nL to 1.2 µL. It has the ability to aspirate from ultra low volumes of sample (dead volume as low as 0.2 µL), dispense and efficiently mix the liquid.
Tycho™ NT.6 enables scientists to quickly and precisely verify their protein quality, purity, concentration, functionality and similarity — in a single and short experiment. The technology behind NanoTemper Technologies instrument relies on a real time monitoring of any changes in the intrinsic protein fluorescence, detected at both 350 nm and 330 nm, from tryptophan and tyrosine residues in the measured sample. This simple and trustworthy approach verifies protein characteristics by looking at the structural integrity using samples intrinsic signal. As a thermal ramp is applied, the changes in the intrinsic fluorescence are measured constantly and the results indicate transitions in the folding state of a given protein sample. Tycho NT.6 allows testing and comparing the relative quality and stability of a proteins during any step of a purification or detailed characterization workflow. Results are generated in three minutes which means better and faster decisions can be made to potentially take or stop before any following experimental steps. The influences of buffer formulation and/or storage conditions on relative stability and similarity of either freshly prepared or batch-to batch preparations are swiftly determined. Tycho NT.6 automatically generates thermal unfolding profiles, identifies inflection temperatures (Ti), analyzes interactions effects on relative stability and monitors fluorescence sample brightness providing keen insight on sample quality and possible functionality.
Anaerobic chamber
Anaerobic chamber with adjustable oxygen and carbon dioxide concentration. The chamber is adapted to perform experiments and operate the nanodevice robot in anaerobic conditions. The chamber also has temperature and moisture control
Vitrobot™
Vitrobot is a part of Cryo-EM workflow and completely automates the vitrification process to provide fast, easy, reproducible sample preparation. It performs the cryo-fixation process at constant physical and mechanical conditions like temperature, relative humidity, blotting conditions and freezing velocity. This ensures high quality cryo-fixation results and a high sample preparation throughput prior to cryo-TEM observation. The Vitrobot’s controlled environmental technology prevents cooling and concentration of artifacts that are inevitable in other freezing protocols. The transfer from the vitrification medium into the liquid nitrogen atmosphere has been automated, ensuring consistent sample quality at high sample throughput.
Liquidator 96™ Manual Pipetting System
Pipetting all 96 wells at once simplifies micro-volume applications for protein crystallization. METTLER TOLEDO’s Rainin Liquidator™ 96 streamlines any 96-well application in volume range 0.5 to 20 μL.
JEOL HDT-400
To make the process of a sample application on a TEM grid more efficient, often hydrophilic treatment is needed. Charging of polymer film on the grid can be achieved with glow discharge. Structural Biology Core Facility has access to Jeol HDT-400 glow discharge device, which can be used to charge polymer film either positively or negatively. It can also be used for the hydrophilic treatment of diamond knives for ultramicrotomy.
Data storage system
Backups and data storage is utilized via QNAP TS-1253U NAS unit equipped with six 12 TB Seagate Exos X12 enterprise hard drives. To secure stored data drives are arranged into RAID 5+0 array, yielding total of 43.62 TB of space. Six not used HDD bays allow for further future upgrade of storing space.
Its highly stable 300 kV TEM platform and industry-leading Autoloader (cryogenic sample manipulation robot) are designed for automated applications, such as single particle analysis (SPA) and cryo-tomography.
This state-of-art microscope will be soon available at SOLARIS in National Cryo-EM Facility. To find out more click here.
