Rigaku to Offer the TTP LabTech mosquito® Nanoliter Pipetting System for Automated Protein Crystallization

Rigaku Americas Corporation is pleased to announce that the company has entered into an agreement with TTP LabTech (Royston, UK) to offer the mosquito® nanolitre pipetting system as part of the Rigaku CrystalMation™ platform for automated protein crystallization experiments. As used by the pharmaceutical industry for rational drug design, the mosquito® technology will be implemented on a custom basis for customers doing high throughput research on membrane proteins as well as RNA and DNA research.

TTP LabTech's mosquito® is widely used for automated crystallography throughout the world. The mosquito® has disposable, positive displacement pipettes, which ensure zero cross contamination and the instrument can accurately aspirate and dispense a wide range of liquid types and viscosities. Mosquito®'s precise linear drives and optical sensors achieve positional accuracy better than 0.05mm in the X, Y and Z axes. This, along with the tightly toleranced and relatively short pipette tips, allows drops to be placed with a high degree of accuracy in the center of sub-wells in crystallography-specific microplates or on to hanging drop membranes.

Specifically engineered to meet demanding objectives, the Rigaku CrystalMation system consists of banks of the Rigaku Minstrel™ HT imaging instruments, each coupled to up to two Rigaku Gallery™ 700 incubators. These incubators, operating at either ambient temperature or down to 4?C, are integrated by a central Rigaku Integration Module™. Complete liquid handling, for both screen makeup and protein dispense, are automated using the respective Rigaku Alchemist II, Phoenix RE and TTP LabTech mosquito® modules in conjunction with robotic plate sealer stations. CrystalTrak, an Oracle™ based database application, forms the software backbone for designing, capturing, and analyzing crystallization experiments.