Crystal Annealing is a promising technique to improve diffraction quality of poorly diffracting protein crystals.

The Cryo Shutter, developed by Dr. Uwe Mueller et al., MX-Lab at BESSY-II, HZB Berlin-Adlershof, is designed for crystal annealing at home sources:

• Precise interruption of the cryostream
• Timer controlled or manually triggered shutter operation
• Reproducible crystal annealing on the loop
• Minimal spacial requirements at sample position
• Extremely fast closing and opening of the shutter prevents turbulences

The Cryo Shutter Assembly Kit is available for Cryojet Systems (Oxford Instruments) as well as for Cryostream 700 Systems (Oxford Cryosystems).

Shutter operation requires a compressed air source!

References

• Harp et al. (1999) Macromolecular crystal annealing: evaluation of techniques and variables. Acta Cryst D55:1329
• Bunick et al. (1998) Macromolecular crystal annealing: techniques and case studies. The Rigaku Journal 15:2