Segmented flow generator for serial crystallography at the European X-ray free electron laser

• Main Authors: Austin Echelmeier, Jorvani Cruz Villarreal, Marc Messerschmidt, Daihyun Kim, Jesse D. Coe, Darren Thifault, Sabine Botha, Ana Egatz-Gomez, Sahir Gandhi, Gerrit Brehm, Chelsie E. Conrad, Debra T. Hansen, Caleb Madsen, Saša Bajt, J. Domingo Meza-Aguilar, Dominik Oberthür, Max O. Wiedorn, Holger Fleckenstein, Derek Mendez, Juraj Knoška, Jose M. Martin-Garcia, Hao Hu, Stella Lisova, Aschkan Allahgholi, Yaroslav Gevorkov, Kartik Ayyer, Steve Aplin, Helen Mary Ginn, Heinz Graafsma, Andrew J. Morgan, Dominic Greiffenberg, Alexander Klujev, Torsten Laurus, Jennifer Poehlsen, Ulrich Trunk, Davide Mezza, Bernd Schmidt, Manuela Kuhn, Raimund Fromme, Jolanta Sztuk-Dambietz, Natascha Raab, Steffen Hauf, Alessandro Silenzi, Thomas Michelat, Chen Xu, Cyril Danilevski, Andrea Parenti, Leonce Mekinda, Britta Weinhausen, Grant Mills, Patrik Vagovic, Yoonhee Kim, Henry Kirkwood, Richard Bean, Johan Bielecki, Stephan Stern, Klaus Giewekemeyer, Adam R. Round, Joachim Schulz, Katerina Dörner, Thomas D. Grant, Valerio Mariani, Anton Barty, Adrian P. Mancuso, Uwe Weierstall, John C. H. Spence, Henry N. Chapman, Nadia Zatsepin, Petra Fromme, Richard A. Kirian, Alexandra Ros
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Nature Publishing Group 2020-09-01
• Series: Nature Communications
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18156-7

Due to the pulsed nature of X-ray free electron laser (XFEL) instruments the majority of protein crystals, which are injected using continuous jet injection techniques are wasted. Here, the authors present a microfluidic device to deliver aqueous protein crystal laden droplets segmented with an immiscible oil and demonstrate that with this device an approx. 60% reduction in sample waste was achieved for data collection of 3-deoxy-D-manno-octulosonate 8-phosphate synthase crystals at the EuXFEL.