Towards long-wavelength protein crystallography: keeping a protein crystal frozen in vacuum

There is growing interest to explore the long-wavelength X-ray domain for macromolecular crystallography (MX) experiments but there are a number of practical issues that make these experiments difficult to perform. In this article we study several aspects related to cooling a protein crystal in a vacuum environment. We investigated thermal contact conductance (TCC) of copper-copper joints and designed a demountable sample holder assembly with a magnetic joint that facilitates good thermal conductivity and reliability over a long time period. The thermal conductivity of amorphous ice formed by a 20% solution of ethylene glycol was studied. It is concluded that the ice thickness is the factor that can compromise the cooling of protein crystals and therefore it should be carefully controlled.