Drop-on-fixed-target reaction initiation approach for serial and time-resolved crystallography.

Kamps JJAG., Hinchliffe P., Glerup J., Freeman EI., Lang PA., Tooke CL., Beer M., Parkinson L., Gu DH., Park S., Devenish N., Zhou T., Shilova A., Kaur S., Rabe P., Schofield CJ., Spencer J., Park J., Owen RL., Orville AM., Aller P.

We describe the design and implementation of a drop-on-fixed-target method for time-resolved serial crystallography at both synchrotron and XFEL facilities. A piezoelectric droplet dispensing pipette is employed for addition of picolitre volume aqueous droplets (∼40-90 pl; ∼40-55 µm diameter sphere), containing (co-)substrate(s) or ligand(s), onto enzyme microcrystals previously loaded into the trapezoidal wells of an etched crystalline silicon fixed-target chip containing 25 600 wells in a high-density, square grid with 125 µm centre-to-centre well spacing. These features demand exquisite accuracy and thereby constrain motion controls to enable robust time-resolved crystallographic studies. The system was tested with three enzyme systems, comprising lysozyme and two β-lactamases, CTX-M-15 and AmpCEC. Mitigation strategies for cross-well contamination, including the implementation of interleaved controls, are described; the overall performance of the system at synchrotron and X-ray free-electron laser facilities was evaluated. This drop-on-fixed-target method is a reliable framework for time-resolved crystallography and will improve the consistency of measurements across facilities.

DOI

10.1107/S2052252526003489

Type

Journal article

Publication Date

2026-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

Keywords

enzyme mechanisms, sample delivery, serial crystallography, structure determination, time-resolved studies

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