X-ray crystallography is one of the most powerful techniques to study the three-dimensional structures of biological macromolecules. The multi-user protein crystallography facility at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry provides the instrumentation and expertise from X-ray diffraction data collection and processing to structure solution and refinement. The laboratory is equipped with state-of-the-art hardware and software to facilitate crystallography groups to determine their structures. We also provide services and training in every stage of structure determination process for non-crystallography groups who are interested in solving the structures of their favorite proteins.
The facility has two laboratories: X-ray diffraction lab (PS-D3) and crystallography computing lab (PS-D210A). X-ray diffraction lab has a RAXIS IV++ image plate detector mounted on a Rigaku RU200 rotating anode X-ray generator equipped with the Osmic optics system. A new Oxford cryo-cooling system allows low temperature X-ray data collection at 100K. The Crystallography computing lab is equipped with Linux and Windows XP workstations.
