The HWI Crystallization Center has been awarded NIH NIGMS funding to become a National Resource for crystallography.  As the National High-Throughput Crystallization Center, we support academic, government, and non-profit research institutes and industry, providing unique protein crystallization services for structural biology. Our methods have generated lead crystallization conditions for approximately half of all samples submitted and provided solubility phase information across 1,536 different chemical conditions – information that can guide optimization and troubleshoot recalcitrant systems. Since it began operations in February 2000, the Crystallization Center has set up over 25 million crystallization experiments on more than 18,000 biological macromolecules for almost 2,000 laboratories worldwide. Macromolecular crystallization services at HWI enable experiments that are monitored with state-of-the-art imaging techniques, empowering the detection of crystals that other techniques miss. Our academic, government, and non-profit services are subsidized by NIH support.

Crystallization Screening at HWI provides:

• Expert staff – Dr. Sarah EJ Bowman has been directing the Center since being recruited to HWI in 2017 and works with a growing team of scientists that have been doing structural biology for close to two decades.
• State-of-the-art instrumentation – Brightfield (visual), second-order harmonic, and UV-two photon excited fluorescence techniques in a Rock Imager 1000 with SONICC are used, so no crystal is missed.
• Timely access – Runs are scheduled in advance on a monthly basis with multiple setup windows.
• A history of success – The Center has worked with academic, non-profit, government and industry users, and has screened over 18,000 proteins for close to 2,000 laboratories worldwide.
• Confidentiality – Information will not be publicly disclosed regarding any sample received for crystallization trials without the express written consent of the investigator(s).

News from the HTX Center

• • New paper and video out in Journal of Visualized Experiments highlighting the experimental protocols in the HTX Center.
  • New paper out in Acta D describing the HTX Center operations.
    

Information for Upcoming Crystallization Screening

The Crystallization Center Produces Results

Dr. Sarah EJ Bowman: Director

Dr. Bowman has been working in structural biology for over 15 years. She completed her PhD research at University of Rochester in the Bren Lab. She then moved to Massachusetts Institute of Technology for postdoctoral research in theDrennan and Stultz Groups (supported by an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA fellowship), followed by a second postdoctoral appointment at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Bowman joined the Crystallization Center as the Director in July 2017.  She is the PI of the NIGMS National Resource grant funding the HTX Center.  Her research group is working to develop new methods that combine crystallographic and spectroscopic approaches to answer fundamental questions about protein biochemistry, especially in metalloproteins.

Dr. Miranda Lynch: Co-Investigator

Dr. Gabby Budziszewski: Operations Manager

Elizabeth Snell: Research Associate

Tiffany Wright: Research Associate

Computational Support:

Stephen Potter: Director of Information Technology

Nate Michals: Systems Administrator

Crystals of the Month Nov 2022!

MicroED structure of Dynobactin A from a recent paper just published in Nature Microbiology (https://rdcu.be/cWmNJ).