 |
 |
Ha, everyone seems to be bragging about how far back cryo- crystallography really goes. In that vain, I'd like to mention that, in Martinsried, we had a room that was lined with insulated steel walls and that could be flushed with liquid nitrogen. It was requested (demanded, really...) by Robert Huber when the Max-Planck Institute was finalized in 1972 (I hope I got my history right). That room contained an entire diffraction system. Talk about crystal cooling... bah, way too dinky. Cool the entire room! Of course, it was a hazard to work in that room, and so - as far as I know - there was only one post-doc from India how ever used it. That room had an ante-room with two more generators plus detectors that could be cooled down to -20°C! Ah, the good old Wild West times of macromolecular crystallography... Cheers - MM On Jun 19, 2008, at 11:48 AM, Pietro Roversi wrote: > Well everyone, talking of early applications of cryocooling to X-ray > crystallography, what about Sten Samson's marvellous helium cryostat > which was operational at Caltech since the end of the 1970s and used > to > reach temperatures around 20 K routinely ...., see for example: > > Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1982 Jul;79(13):4040-4. > Structure of a B-DNA dodecamer at 16 K. > Drew HR, Samson S, Dickerson RE. > > That instrument (and its twin) are now both with Riccardo Destro in > Milano. > > Ciao! > > Pietro > > > > > -- > Pietro Roversi > Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, Oxford University > South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3RE, England UK > Tel. 0044-1865-275385 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mischa Machius, PhD Associate Professor Department of Biochemistry UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas 5323 Harry Hines Blvd.; ND10.214A Dallas, TX 75390-8816; U.S.A. Tel: +1 214 645 6381 Fax: +1 214 645 6353