The Macromolecular Crystallography Facility provides state of the art hardware and software support to those laboratories pursuing X-ray diffraction-based structural biology research within the department and university. To that end, we operate both in-house X-ray diffraction equipment and all the necessary computer hardware and software for structure determination and analysis.

We maintain two X-ray generators with image plate area detectors for X-ray data acquisition: a Rigaku RAXIS-IV++ area detector mounted on a Rigaku Ru-300 X-ray generator with focusing mirror optics of the Yale design, capable of resolving diffraction from crystals with large unit cell dimensions; and a Rigaku RAXIS-IIc area detector mounted on a Rigaku Ru-200 X-ray generator, also with Yale mirror optics. Both systems are equipped with Oxford Cryostream cryo-crystallographic apparatus to reduce radiation damage by flash-cooling the samples. These systems are capable of maintaining crystals at 100K throughout duration of data collection. Samples can be retrieved while still in their frozen state, stored and transported to synchrotron sources for further data collection as necessary.

The facility maintains a cluster of Unix-based servers and graphics workstations equipped for all aspects of structure determination and analysis. We operate a mix of dual CPU Intel machines running Linux, dual CPU Apple G5s running OSX, and single CPU Silicon Graphics Octanes running IRIX. The installed software includes everything necessary for structural biology from raw data processing and structure determination to model refinement and analysis.

The facility manager can provide advice about how to obtain diffraction-quality crystals, and evaluate initial crystals for their quality and feasibility of structure determination. In favorable cases we can pursue the entire structure determination in-house. We are also able to provide structural biology and modeling expertise and guidance to non-crystallographic laboratories that benefit from the use of available structures in the design and interpretation of experiments

Facility Manager: Phil Jeffrey, Schultz 219, 8-3978, pjeffrey@princeton.edu