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Elastase is a serine protease from the chymotrypsin family of enzymes with the ability to degrade elastin, an important component of connective tissues. Excessive elastin proteolysis leads to a number of pathological diseases. Porcine pancreatic elastase (PPE) is often used for drug development as a model for human leukocyte elastase (HLE), with which it shares high sequence identity. Crystals of PPE were grown overnight using sodium sulfate and sodium acetate at acidic pH. Cross-linking the crystals with glutaraldehyde was needed to resist the soaking procedure with a diethyl N-(methyl)pyridinyl-substituted oxo-β-lactam inhibitor. Crystals of PPE bound to the inhibitor belonged to the orthorhombic space group P2₁2₁2₁, with unit-cell parameters a = 51.0, b = 58.3, c = 74.9 Å, and diffracted to 1.8 Å resolution using an in-house X-ray source.

Rhodopsin is a membrane protein from the G protein-coupled receptor family. Together with its ligand retinal, it forms the visual pigment responsible for night vision. In order to perform ultrafast dynamics studies, a time-resolved serial femtosecond crystallography method is required owing to the nonreversible activation of rhodopsin. In such an approach, microcrystals in suspension are delivered into the X-ray pulses of an X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) after a precise photoactivation delay. Here, a millilitre batch production of high-density microcrystals was developed by four methodical conversion steps starting from known vapour-diffusion crystallization protocols: (i) screening the low-salt crystallization conditions preferred for serial crystallography by vapour diffusion, (ii) optimization of batch crystallization, (iii) testing the crystal size and quality using second-harmonic generation (SHG) imaging and X-ray powder diffraction and (iv) production of millilitres of rhodopsin crystal suspension in batches for serial crystallography tests; these crystals diffracted at an XFEL at the Linac Coherent Light Source using a liquid-jet setup.