The Stanford Automated Mounter: pushing the limits of sample exchange at the SSRL macromolecular crystallography beamlines.

Silvia Russi,Scott E Mcphillips,Aina E Cohen,Jinhu Song

doi:10.1107/s1600576716000649

Abstract

The Stanford Automated Mounter System, a system for mounting and dismounting cryo-cooled crystals, has been upgraded to increase the throughput of samples on the macromolecular crystallography beamlines at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource. This upgrade speeds up robot maneuvers, reduces the heating/drying cycles, pre-fetches samples and adds an air-knife to remove frost from the gripper arms. Sample pin exchange during automated crystal quality screening now takes about 25 s, five times faster than before this upgrade.

Highlights

The structural genomics and proteomics projects of the past decade have accelerated the development of automation at macromolecular crystallography beamlines, thereby enabling users of synchrotron beam time to collect and retrieve data at an ever increasing pace and efficiency (Abola et al, 2000; Manjasetty et al, 2008)
Automated sample handling with the Stanford Automated Mounter (SAM) has had a tremendous impact, increasing the overall number of experiments carried out at Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) and opening up the possibility for users to conduct their experiments remotely while retaining full control of the SSRL macromolecular crystallography beamlines (McPhillips et al, 2002; Soltis et al, 2008; Smith & Cohen, 2008)
Since the beginning of the 2015 experimental run, the SAM systems at all SSRL macromolecular crystallography beamlines have been upgraded for faster operation

Summary

Introduction

The structural genomics and proteomics projects of the past decade have accelerated the development of automation at macromolecular crystallography beamlines, thereby enabling users of synchrotron beam time to collect and retrieve data at an ever increasing pace and efficiency (Abola et al, 2000; Manjasetty et al, 2008). During this time, diverse automated systems for mounting and dismounting crystals were designed and implemented at synchrotrons worldwide: ACTOR, CATS, ALS, SC3, MARCSC, G-Rob, SPACE and SAM (http:// smb.slac.stanford.edu/robosync/). As described we set out to upgrade SAM, a proven robust and versatile system, for a faster experimental pace

Operation of the original SAM system

The upgraded SAM system

Optimizing the order of robot operations

Findings

Discussion and conclusions