Many scientists working in drug discovery need a reliable supply of drops with, say, three to seven crystals per drop for soaking and ligand-binding experiments. A very efficient approach is to use microseeding in crystallization setups. By diluting the seed stock, you can control the number of crystals per drop very reliably. Our range of crystallization robots is particularly good at setting up microseeding experiments. Our systems have the great advantage of wasting very little seed stock – a plate can be set up with as little as 1.5 µl of seed stock. Bear in mind that the seed stock can sometimes be much more valuable than the protein! Douglas Instruments has recently introduced a new Combinatorial Optimization script to make microseeding experiments even easier to set up. This allows you to put a different seed stock in each row of your crystallization plate, so that it becomes really easy to find the dilution that gives you just the right number of crystals. Please contact us if you’re interested in a demonstration in your lab, using your own target proteins and seed crystals. 
| Crystals grown by Laura Cendron at the University of Padova. Left, crystals used to make the seed stock. Other images, crystals grown with seeding. | Combinatorial Optimization |
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A separate additive or seed
stock is added to each row
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Additives A1, A2 etc. are
picked up from the PCR tubes on the right
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Different precipitants or
cocktails (P1, P2 etc.) can be placed in the columns
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Crystallization ingredients
thus can be "reshuffled"
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For
microseeding experiments, a dilution series can
be set up from neat seed stock (top row) to e.g.
1:100,000 dilution (row 5)
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