New group of x-ray crystallography at the Institute of Biotechnology AS CR

Bohdan Schneider

Institute of Biotechnology AS CR, v.v.i., Vídeňská 1083, CZ-142 20 Prague, Czech Republic

Keywords: x-ray crystallography, diffraction

Institute of Biotechnology AS CR, v.v.i. (IBT) was founded in 2008 with the goal to conduct cutting-edge research on topics suitable for diagnostic and therapeutic applications in human medicine and to serve as a nucleation center of BIOCEV (Biotechnological Center Vestec), the planned biotechnological research center of the Academy of Sciences and Charles University that is to be built at Vestec near Prague by year 2012 with the support of the European Regional Development Funds. Structural biology, namely x-ray crystallography, will be an important methodology at BIOCEV. To nucleate future crystallography group(s) at BIOCEV we have started to build a crystallography laboratory as a part of Dr. Šebo Laboratory of protein ligand engineering at IBT. Currently, the laboratory is fully functional from expression and purification of Prokaryotic proteins to structure refinement. Besides the standard equipment for expression and purification, we have completed a crystallization room operated at 18 °C with stereo microscope Olympus SZX-16 and a diffraction lab with rotating anode Rigaku RU-H3R with image plate detector Raxis4 and cryo-protection Cooler 600 by Oxford Cryosystem. This previously used diffraction system is a generous gift by Prof. Stephen Neidle and Dr. Gary Parkinson from School of Pharmacy, University of London, UK. Staff of the x-ray lab includes four people including a full-time technician. The facility is well equipped for training purposes and for testing diffraction quality of crystals. It is going to be operated as an open facility for any non-profit research group.