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Workshop #3 at the NSLS Users' Meeting

The Impact of Cryogenic Specimen Automounters on the Future of Macromolecular Crystallography

Location: Bldg. 463, Biology, Large Seminar Room

Date: Monday, May 23, 2005

Organizers:
Dieter Schneider (BNL, Biology) (schneider@bnl.gov)   
Robert Sweet (BNL, Biology)  (sweet@bnl.gov) 
Thomas Earnest, (LBL) (TNEarnest@lbl.gov) 
Gerd Rosenbaum, (ANL) (grosenbaum@anl.gov)

Description: Cryogenic "automounters" are becoming common at synchrotron x-ray sources and in a few commercial laboratories. There are several commercially available models, and several home-built ones, used in a range of SR sources around the world. This workshop provides an opportunity for the PX community to hear the major builders of these instruments describe important features of the operation of their instruments, and the sorts of ways the scientific community is using them. 
An hour and a half will be reserved at the end of the workshop for open discussion. A critical item is to discuss seriously (both builders and users) the standardization of the fixtures the experimenters use to handle their specimens: crystal "caps" and pins, and the cassettes used to carry the caps to the automount robot. Another useful item for discussion will be experiences with various "loop-centering" vs. "crystal-centering" algorithms.

Schedule:

8:30 a.m. Thomas Earnest, LBL
"Introduction to the Workshop and the LBL/ALS Automounter"
9:00 a.m. Aina Cohen, SSRL
"Automation of High-Throughput Protein Crystal Screening at SSRL"
9:30 a.m. Ross Doyle, MAR USA, Inc. Illinois
"Marcsc: Cryogenic Sample Changer"
10:00 a.m. Break
10:15 a.m. Franck Felisaz, EMBL-ESRF Joint Structural Biology Group & MRC Grenoble
"A Sample Changer Robot for High Throughput MX (a.k.a. PX) Beamlines"
10:45 a.m. Bernard Lavault, Eur. Mol. Biol. Lab., Grenoble
"Automatic Sample Centering for High Throughput MX (a.k.a.PX) Beamlines"
11:15 a.m Anne Mulichak, IMCA-CAT APS
"Experiences with the Rigaku-MSC ACTOR Robotic System at IMCA-CAT"
11:45 a.m. Deming Shu, APS
"Development of a Crystal Mounting Robot for the APS Structural Biology CAT"
12:05 p.m. Lunch
12:50 Gerd Rosenbaum, APS
"Adaptation of the LBL Automounter for the South-East Regional CAT"
1:10 p.m.  Bob He, Bruker-Nonius
"BruNo the Robot"
1:40 p.m. Dieter Schneider, BNL
"The BNL Modifications of the LBL Automounter"
2:10 p.m. Quan Hao, CHESS
"High Throughput Crystallography at MacCHESS"
2:40 p.m. Break
2:55 p.m. Ehmke Pohl, Swiss Light Source
"The Other Swiss Perspective on Robotics and Automation"
3:25 p.m. Discussion
Potential Topics: Standardization of Caps, Pins, Cassettes, etc.; Centering on X-tals Not Just Loops; Communication Between Robots and Lab Information Management Systems
4:45 p.m. Summary: Dieter Schneider, R. Sweet
5:00 p.m. Adjourn