A Unique Approach to Hanging Drop Automation

TTP LabTech's mosquito® has a unique approach to automating hanging drop protein crystallography set-ups. This increases the chance of scale-up success as it allows the same technique to be used for both screening and scale-up, which is particularly beneficial for membrane protein crystallographers. It is one of the key reasons mosquito has become the first choice for protein crystallographers along with its accurate positioning, ability to miniaturise crystallography set-ups (with drop volumes of only 50nl to 1200nl) and disposable pipettes which guarantee zero-cross contamination of samples.

Mosquito automates hanging drop plate set-up by aliquoting protein solution from a single source column to all 96 adhesive-free ?windows' on a hanging drop plate seal. Then, because mosquito pipettes in columns, it is able to take a column of droplets of solutions from the reservoir plate and place these directly on top of the protein drops to form a mirror image of the reservoir plate. The seal containing the mirror image drops is then inverted over the reservoir plate so each combined droplet of protein and screen hangs over its corresponding well of reservoir solution. Complete set-up takes under 2 minutes and it does not require a wash step or the creation of a duplicate source plate.

Automating drop set-up allows the researcher to screen more conditions using less sample in a shorter time, with the added advantages of improved accuracy and repeatability.