Hi Gloria,

We’ve successfully mounted crystals in 1.5 mm and 2.0 mm quartz glass capillaries. Some success was achieved in 2.5 and 3.0 mm ones (but also a lot of failure). Crystals will flow into them quite easily if they are fresh and not adhered to the well or cover slip. There was a tip a long time ago (I believe from Hampton) of touching dry ice to a plate to release a crystal if they are stuck.

If you have an inverted microscope you can use that with a capillary in a vertical orientation to suck up the sample. Shameless plug - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24904250

Once in the capillary we use microwicks to move the fluid and uncut 0.1 mm regular glass capillaries to move the crystal if necessary. They are formed with a glass ball on the end and are so thin that the force on the crystal face is very slight.

Borosilicate capillaries proved to be extremely fragile and I would not recommend them. While they can be cut with a hot wire, X-ray topography suggests that they have micro-cracks and fluid is lost over time.

Is this a trick question to get people to reveal their age … the next one will be about developing film ;)

Second shameless plug – GRC on Diffraction Methods in Structural Biology, July 17^th-22^nd, deadline for applications June 19^th. https://www.grc.org/programs.aspx?id=11655

Cheers,

Eddie

Edward Snell Ph.D.

CEO Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute

Assistant Prof. Department of Structural Biology, University at Buffalo

700 Ellicott Street, Buffalo, NY 14203-1102

Phone:     (716) 898 8631         Fax: (716) 898 8660

Skype:      eddie.snell                 Email: [log in to unmask]

Heisenberg was probably here!

From: CCP4 bulletin board [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Gloria Borgstahl
Sent: Friday, April 15, 2016 2:19 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] Mounting very large crystals for neutron crystallography

The crystals are between 0.3 mm3 to 2.4 mm3

On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 1:11 PM, Keller, Jacob <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>We are fortunate to have grown neutron size crystals…

That seems pretty small to me…

Earthling,

JPK