Sep 20, 2025
Crystal harvesting, shipment to synchrotron and X-ray data collection
- Dieter Waschbuesch1,
- Amir Khan2
- 1School of Biochemistry and Immunology, Trinity College Dublin;
- 2Trinity College Dublin
- AKhanLab
Protocol Citation: Dieter Waschbuesch, Amir Khan 2025. Crystal harvesting, shipment to synchrotron and X-ray data collection. protocols.io https://dx.doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.n92ld6wq9g5b/v1
Manuscript citation:
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.08.19.670962
License: This is an open access protocol distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
Protocol status: Working
We use this protocol and it's working
Created: September 14, 2025
Last Modified: September 20, 2025
Protocol Integer ID: 227259
Keywords: harvesting crystal, crystal harvesting, shipment to synchrotron, synchrotron, containers for shipping, shipment, protocol, shipping, standard cryo, container
Funders Acknowledgements:
Research Ireland
Grant ID: 20/FFP-A/8446
Abstract
This protocol describes the for harvesting crystals, and sending them to the synchrotron for remote X-ray data collection. Standard cryo-tools and containers for shipping are used.
Materials
- 24 well Linbro plates
- Mitegen crystal mounts and loops
- Vaseline white petroleum jelly
- glass coverslips
- UniPucks, associated tools, Molecular Dimensions
- CX100 dry shipper
- liquid nitrogen
Troubleshooting
Crystal harvesting
Crystals are transferred using loops from Mitegen and briefly dunked in the precipitant solution supplemented with 25% glycerol to reduce ice formation during harvesting. Loops are then used to pickup and dunk crystals into cryovials (from Mitegen) that are submerged in liquid nitrogen. The loops and vials are now closed with a magnetic neck and transferred to UniPucks that can be loaded onto canisters and CX100 shipping dewars for synchrotron data collection.
Shipping dewars with crystals housed in pucks under cold conditions are shipped to synchrotrons using FEDEX. Typically the synchrotrons used are NSLS2 at Brookhaven, New York; Soleil synchrotron in Saclay, France; and the Advanced Photon Sources (APS), in Argonne, Illinois.
harvest-tools.jpeg625KB
harvest-tools.jpeg625KB Crystals are mounted at the beamline remotely by our local contacts at the synchrotron. We typically do not go the synchrotron for data collection, it is collected remotely using software specific for each beamline at the various synchrotron facilities. Data collection parameters will be found from the raw images that we have deposited along with the refined crystal structure in data repositories.