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
