MicroRT tubing kit and goniometer bases

MicroRT is the answer for high-throughput room temperature diffraction screening and data collection. Go from crystal in a drop to crystal in the x-ray beam at room temperature in 2 minutes with 99% change of success.

You are now no-longer dealing with inadequate low temperature diffraction quality; no-longer painfully dealing with glass capillary mounting methods; and even can't easily retrieve crystal for low-temperature data collection.

Room temperature measurements are essential to determine whether the cause is poor as -grown crystal quality, damage caused by ligand and/or cryoprotectant soaks, and/or damage caused by the flask cooling process itself.

Our patent-pending MicroRT system makes collecting data at room temperature as easy as at low temperatures, and allows you to collect room and low temperature data from the same crystal.

How does it work:

Replacing the standard 10µm wall glass capillaries with ultra-thin-wall transparent polyester tubing that produces 60% less background scatter. Tubing diameter that's much larger than your crystal and MicroMount, and a base that holds both the MicroMount and capture the tubing.

To prepare the sample, just inject stabilising liquid down into the tube toward its sealed end, using a gel-loading pipette-tip. Mount your crystal on MicroMount and insert MicroMount into the base. Thirdly, pull the tubing down over the crystal and mount onto the base.

No more cutting, crushing and breaking. No more cracking and shattering crystals on sharp capillary edges. No more swishing crystals back and forth to position them. No more fiddling with wicks. No more wax. No more alignment problem, caused by capillary/liquid lensing.

Once you have collected your room temperature frames, just pop off the tubing, plunge the MicroMount in your choice of liquid cryogen, and you're ready to collect a low-temperature data set. Or else, soak your crystal in the next solution, pop the plastic tubing back on, and repeat until you're checked out each solution or step in your protocol.

The only disadvantage is that polyester is somewhat gas permeable. You will want to keep a good sized plug of liquid in the tube and to measure your crystals within a day of mounting to make sure they do not dehydrate. If you want to store the crystals for longer, you can replace the polyester tube with any 2 mm ID glass or thick wall plastic tubing.

Features

• Ideal for both room-temperature structure determination and for diagnosing the cause of poor low-temperature diffraction
• Easy crystal mounting
• Easy collecting of both room and low-temperature data from a single crystal
• Significantly less background x-ray scatter
• Easier crystal visualisation and alignment
• Accurate and reproducible crystal positioning
• Suitable for automated alignment and data collection
• One size tubing fits all.
• Tubing is reusable

Specifications

NOTES: Heat seal at one end. Optically clear. Some small optical distortion is due to the small thickness variations around the circumference.

Includes: Each bottle contains 20 x 37mm long clear polyester tubes, sealed at one end, an extra-keen razor blade for cutting the tubes to a desired length, and a tiny tube of grease for lubricating the base (see our Goniometer Bases to order MicroRT compatible bases).