Design and Development of a Robot-Based Automation System for Cryogenic Crystal Sample Mounting at the Advanced Photon Source

X-ray crystallography is the primary method to determine the 3D structures of complex macromolecules at high resolution. In the years to come, the Advanced Photon Source (APS) and similar 3rd-generation synchrotron sources elsewhere will become the most powerful tools for studying atomic structures of biological molecules. One of the major bottlenecks in the x-ray data collection process is the constant need to change and realign the crystal sample. This is a very time- and manpower-consuming task. An automated sample mounting system will help to solve this bottleneck problem. We have developed a novel robot-based automation system for cryogenic crystal sample mounting at the APS. Design of the robot-based automation system, as well as its on-line test results at the Argonne Structural Biology Center (SBC) 19-BM experimental station, are presented in this paper