An electropneumatic cleaning device for piezo-actuator-driven picolitre-droplet dispensers.

Recently, we introduced the liquid application method for time-resolved analyses (LAMA). The time-consuming cleaning cycles required for the substrate solution exchange and storage of the sensitive droplet-dispenser nozzles present practical challenges. In this work, a dispenser cleaning system for the semi-automated cleaning of the piezo-actuator-driven picolitre-droplet dispensers required for LAMA is introduced to streamline typical workflows.

Millisecond cryo-trapping by the spitrobot crystal plunger simplifies time-resolved crystallography.

We introduce the spitrobot, a protein crystal plunger, enabling reaction quenching via cryo-trapping with a time-resolution in the millisecond range. Protein crystals are mounted on canonical micromeshes on an electropneumatic piston, where the crystals are kept in a humidity and temperature-controlled environment, then reactions are initiated via the liquid application method (LAMA) and plunging into liquid nitrogen is initiated after an electronically set delay time to cryo-trap intermediate states. High-magnification images are automatically recorded before and after droplet deposition, prior to plunging.

Environmental Liquid Cell Technique for Improved Electron Microscopic Imaging of Soft Matter in Solution.

Liquid-phase transmission electron microscopy is a technique for simultaneous imaging of the structure and dynamics of specimens in a liquid environment. The conventional sample geometry consists of a liquid layer tightly sandwiched between two Si3N4 windows with a nominal spacing on the order of 0.5 μm.

The HARE chip for efficient time-resolved serial synchrotron crystallography.

Serial synchrotron crystallography (SSX) is an emerging technique for static and time-resolved protein structure determination. Using specifically patterned silicon chips for sample delivery, the `hit-and-return' (HARE) protocol allows for efficient time-resolved data collection. The specific pattern of the crystal wells in the HARE chip provides direct access to many discrete time points.

Liquid application method for time-resolved analyses by serial synchrotron crystallography.

We introduce a liquid application method for time-resolved analyses (LAMA), an in situ mixing approach for serial crystallography. Picoliter-sized droplets are shot onto chip-mounted protein crystals, achieving near-full ligand occupancy within theoretical diffusion times. We demonstrate proof-of-principle binding of GlcNac to lysozyme, and resolve glucose binding and subsequent ring opening in a time-resolved study of xylose isomerase.