The Plug Maker instrument from Emerald Biosystems grows diffraction-ready protein crystals in Crystalcards in nanovolume drops of protein solution.
The MPCS uses microfluidic technology that generates up to 800 experiments in a single Crystalcard using every nanolitre of the protein sample, without losing any precious protein solution in dead volume.
Sparse matrix and optimisation experiments are generated automatically on chip without the hassle of pipetting crystallisation screens by hand.
The development of the MPCS and the Crystalcards was carried out by Emerald Biostructures and the Accelerated Technologies Center for Gene to 3D Structure, a specialised centre within Protein Structure Initiative 2.
It has been a collaborative effort between Emerald Biostructures and Chicago University, where the microfluidic technology was originally conceived in the laboratory of Prof Rustem Ismagilov, along with development partners ThinXXS Microtechnology (based in Zweibruecken, Germany) and Dolomite Centre (based in Royston, UK).
Emerald Biosystems is commercialising the MPCS technology and holds an exclusive licensed patent portfolio in the field of microfluidic protein crystallisation (US patents 7,129,091; 6,409,832 and patents pending).
Lance Stewart, chief executive officer of Emerald and principal investigator of the ATCG3D, said: 'We've seen beta versions of the Plug Maker outperform conventional crystallisation technologies within the SSGCID [Seattle Structural Genomics Center for Infectious Disease] structure determination pipeline for difficult protein targets.
'Plug-based crystallisation has enabled our researchers to leapfrog the often tedious and slow crystallisation optimisation process using only very small amounts of protein sample,' he added.
