Art Robbins hanging drop seal
UV imaging is a great technique to detect protein crystals under difficult imaging conditions (precipitates, membrane screens, etc), but it requires some extra care when it comes to selecting crystallization plates and seals.
The issue is that plates or seals that are optically transparent can give disappointing results under an UV microscope because of resins and other polymers used in the plate or seal. They either induce background fluorescence that can overwhelm the fluorescence signal from a protein crystal or turn out to be not UV transparent enough to be useful for experimentation.
For hanging drop experiments in particular, choices for UV transparent tape seals were somewhat limited. In that sense we are particularly happy to announce that we have tested the new Art Robbins Instruments 96 hanging drop seal and found it to be compatible with our Desktop Minstrel UV and Minstrel HT UV imagers.
