Other

Structural Genomix, Inc.

Rigaku Automation, Inc.

James A Benjamin

Brian L Ganz

John Andrew Adams

John Andrew Moulds

David A Jewell

John N Hoffman

Christopher T Brovold

Mandel W Mickley

Benjamin Mike Liedblad

Janet M Newman

Janet Newman

Thomas E Vomdran

Jon A Christopher

A liquid dispensing device. The liquid dispensing device has a tray for holding a liquid at a relatively constant level. A syringe is used for drawing fluid from the tray. A liquid container containing a liquid is positioned upside-down in the tray. Atmospheric pressure on the liquid in the tray and a vacuum inside the liquid container prevents liquid from draining from the container except when the liquid level in the tray drops to a level sufficient to allow air into the liquid container and to allow fluid to flow from the liquid container into the tray. The fluid flows from the liquid container into the tray until the level of liquid in the tray returns to the relatively constant level. The positioning of the syringe for drawing fluid is simplified in that the level of fluid in the tray is maintained at an approximately constant level despite withdrawal of quantities of fluid from the tray.

Liquid dispensing device

A device and method for the automated storage and retrieval of trays holding subject matter. A computer system is programmed to control a storage gantry to move the trays between a storage rack and an automated machine. In a preferred embodiment, the subject matter in the trays is a plurality of micro-well plates in which microscopic crystals may be growing and the automated machine is configured to inspect and classify microscopic crystals. The automated machine has an indexing device for sequentially placing microscopic crystals in camera-view of a camera and a control computer is programmed to control the indexing device and to cause the camera to take images of the microscopic crystals and then transfer the images to a classifying processor where the images are classified. In a preferred embodiment, the microscopic crystals are protein crystals that have been grown in the wells of micro-well plates.

Automated storage and retrieval device and method

A blocking device for remote, selective blocking of a cold stream used in a protein crystal annealing process during X-ray protein crystallography includes a blocking member adapted to be selectively moved between at least a blocking position where the blocking member blocks the cold stream and a non-blocking position where the blocking member does not block the cold stream, and an actuation mechanism adapted to impart movement to the blocking member to cause the blocking member to be selectively moved between at least the blocking position and the non-blocking position.

Remote-control, crystal-annealing, cold-stream blocking device and method

Growing community of inventors

San Diego, CA, United States of America

James A Benjamin