Macromolecular crystallography at high pressure with pneumatic diamond anvil cells handled by a six-axis robotic arm

Abstract

A new pneumatic diamond anvil cell has been constructed, generating continuous pressure and temperature variations in the range 0–2.5 GPa and 293–393 K. The cell is designed mainly for high-pressure macromolecular crystallography and should facilitate pressure and temperature annealing of the sample. The analysis is reported of several diffraction data sets of tetragonal hen egg-white lysozyme crystals loaded either in the new cell or in a currently used membrane-based cell. These experiments were performed on beamline FIP-BM30A at the ESRF, Grenoble, a macromolecular crystallography beamline on a bending magnet. Cells were handled and automatically centred by a six-axis robotic arm that was used as a goniometer for data collection by the oscillation method.