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Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences News

Nanolitre Protein Crystallisation Facility

February 2005

The Ministers for Innovation and Health have approved $1.75M from the Bio21 STI funds for the establishment of the Nanolitre Protein Crystallisation Facility for Rational Drug Design and Therapeutic Development. Whilst Bio21 members have considerable resources for protein production and X-ray diffraction data collection and analysis, no single member institution houses a state-of-the-art laboratory to deal with the crucial task of protein crystallization.  The five member institutes the Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, CSIRO, WEHI, SVIMR and ARI have joined together to establish such a facility collaboratively in Victoria. The Nanolitre Protein Crystallisation Facility will provide a suite of infrastructure that will collectively make a radical improvement to the process of protein crystallisation and the production of protein crystals that diffract to atomic resolution. 
The capabilities to be provided by this facility include:

  • robotic preparation and dispensing of crystallisation mother liquors
  • robotic preparation of nano-volume sitting-drop crystallisation trials
  • crystallisation trials performed in micro-fluidic chips
  • robotic incubation and handling of sitting-drop crystallisation plates
  • automated imaging and computer-based management of crystallisation trials
  • crystal humidity control experiments to optimize diffraction
  • dynamic light scattering assessment of protein crystallisation potential
  • web-based portal for users (protein couriered in - results emailed back)

For further information contact Ossama.El-Kabbani@pharm.monash.edu.au.