Protein structure determination using X-ray crystallography typically suffers from two major bottlenecks: producing sufficient quantities of material, and finding appropriate crystallization conditions. The TOPAZ™ Crystallizer, released last year by microfluidics start-up Fluidigm
http://www.fluidigm.com, addresses both of these concerns. Now the South San Francisco-based company has enhanced and expanded its TOPAZ line, providing reagents and newly designed chips as well as hardware to set up and image the crystallization reactions. It's all part of the company's strategy of providing "everything from screen to beam," says product manager Kristin Spataro.