Updates to instrumentation in the Centre of Molecular Structure in BIOCEV

J. Stránský, J. Pavlíček, T. Charnavets, P. Pompach, P. Vaňková, Ľ. Škultétyová, M. Schneiderová, J. Dohnálek

Centre of Molecular Structure, Institute of Biotechnology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Průmyslová 595, 252 50 Vestec u Prahy

Jan.stransky@ibt.cas.cz

The Centre of Molecular Structure offers wide range of methods of structural biology, which are provided via Czech Infrastructure for Integrative Structural Biology (CIISB) and Instruct-ERIC. CMS offers unique opportunity for deep macromolecule characterization using setate-of-art instruments at one place. The instrument portfolio is constantly improved to keep the latest techniques and techonology available to our users. The latest notable additions, are crystal dehumidification system (HCLab, Arinax) for X-ray diffractomemter, and new crystallization robot (NT8, Formulatrix). HCLab is designed to precisely control humudity around the protein crystal before its vitrification, which can lead to improved diffraction quality of the crystal. The technique is traditionally available at synchrotons, however the usage there is suboptimal due to the time constrains. The NT8 crystallization robot operates in humidity controlled environemnt, which enables usage of crystallization drops down to 50 nl. The robot is also equipped for setting lipidic cubic phase (LCP) experiments.

Centre of Molecular Structure is supported by projects LM2015043 and LM2018127 from Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, CIISB for Human Health (CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_013/0001776) and project Structural dynamics of biomolecular systems (CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_003/0000447) from the ERDF.