ChipX: A Novel Microfluidic Chip for Counter-DiffusionCrystallization of Biomolecules and in Situ Crystal Analysis at RoomTemperature.

Microfluidictechnology has opened new possibilities for the crystallization ofbiological macromolecules during the past decade. Microfluidic systemsoffer numerous advantages over conventional crystal growth methods.They enable easy handling of nanovolumes of solutions, extreme miniaturization,and parallelization of crystallization assays, especially for high-throughputscreening applications. Our goal was to design a versatile, low cost,and easy-to-use crystallization chip based on counter-diffusion thatis compatible with on-chip crystallographic characterization. TheChipX is a microfluidic chip made of cyclic olefin copolymer. It wasused to grow crystals of biomolecules and perform complete X-ray diffractionanalyses on synchrotron sources. Our results demonstrate that accuratecrystallographic data can be collected at room temperature directlyfrom ChipX microfluidic devices for both experimental single-wavelengthanomalous dispersion phasing and structure refinement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]