First you need to establish if it is your cryo conditions or the
crystals. Depending where you are - they might have the equipment to do
a wet mount - without freezing. Yes the crystal will not last - but
then you know if the problem is in the
crystal. If it is - you need better crystals. If it is the cryo - you
need to work on that. Tacsimate is mixture of alot of different
compounds - but the smears are too close together to be a small salt
crystal on top...
Good luck,
Ezra
On 1/26/2010 10:42 AM, Zhiyi Wei wrote:
Dear all,
I got a problem with my crystals. I have two total different proteins
that both can be crystallized in the condition with PEG3350 and Tacsimate
(although the concentrations are different) with different shapes. The
crystals look big and beautiful. However, when I test them in synchrotron,
both of these two types of crystals showed poor diffractions. As showed in
the attached diffraction image, the diffraction is up to ~4 A but smear in
one direction while<8 A in the other direction. The interesting thing is
that the diffraction pattern is similar for all crystals (from two different
proteins) that I tested without exception although they belong to different
space groups. So, I wonder whether these kind of pattern is caused by
Tacsimate (I don't know what it is) and how to rescue these crystals. Any
suggestions or comments?
Thanks a lot!
Best,
Zhiyi