The serial millisecond crystallography instrument at the Australian Synchrotron incorporating the "Lipidico" injector.

Abstract

A serial millisecond crystallography (SMX) facility has recently been implemented at the macromolecular crystallography beamline, MX2 at the Australian Synchrotron. The setup utilizes a combination of an EIGER X 16M detector system and an in-house developed high-viscosity injector, "Lipidico." Lipidico uses a syringe needle to extrude the microcrystal-containing viscous media and it is compatible with commercially available syringes. The combination of sample delivery via protein crystals suspended in a viscous mixture and a millisecond frame rate detector enables high-throughput serial crystallography at the Australian Synchrotron. A hit-finding algorithm, based on the principles of "robust-statistics," is employed to rapidly process the data. Here we present the first SMX experimental results with a detector frame rate of 100 Hz (10 ms exposures) and the Lipidico injector using a mixture of lysozyme microcrystals embedded in high vacuum silicon grease. Details of the experimental setup, sample injector, and data analysis pipeline are designed and developed as part of the Australian Synchrotron SMX instrument and are reviewed here.