W0173

Crystallization Data Management – Time for a Solution. Adams JA, Jewell DW, Newman JM, RoboDesign International, 5920 Pasteur Ct., Carlsbad, CA, 92008.

Protein crystallization is an iterative process: one that requires an initial search to find conditions under which the protein will crystallize, and then refinement of parameters until a crystal is produced that diffracts X-ray sufficiently well to allow the structure of the protein to be determined. The push toward high-throughput crystallography and thus high throughput crystallization has driven the demand for data management systems specific for crystallization. Such a system ideally would capture all information about a crystallization experiment; be sufficiently flexible that any crystallization experiment can be described; be easy to use; be useful for datamining to find non-intuitive correlations within crystallization; and be able to suggest an optimal path for crystal growth refinement.

At RoboDesign we have developed CrystalTrak, which is an Oracle® database which specifically addresses the issues above. We will present on how this database can be used to describe an existing experiment, to plan a future experiment, and to find relationships to advance our understanding of the science of protein crystallization. Moreover, this database meshes seamlessly with the imaging hardware and software that we have developed, thus providing a complete solution to crystallization data management.