Aerosol-based ligand soaking of reservoir-free protein crystals

Soaking of macromolecular crystals allows the formation of complexes via diffusion of molecules into a preformed crystal for structural analysis. Soaking offers various advantages over co-crystallization, e.g. small samples and high-throughput experimentation. However, this method has disadvantages, such as inducing mechanical stress on crystals and reduced success rate caused by low affinity/solubility of the ligand. To bypass these issues, the Picodropper was previously developed in the authors' laboratory. This technique aimed to deliver small volumes of compound solution in response to crystal dehydration supported by the Free Mounting System humidity control or by IR-laser-induced protein crystal transformation. Herein, a new related soaking development, the Aerosol-Generator, is introduced. This device delivers compounds onto the solution-free surface of protein crystals using an ultrasonic technique. The produced aerosol stream enables an easier and more accurate control of solution volumes, reduced crystal handling, and crystal-size-independent soaking. The Aerosol-Generator has been used to produce complexes of DPP8 crystals, where otherwise regular soaking did not achieve complex formation. These results demonstrate the potential of this device in challenging ligand-binding scenarios and contribute to further understanding of DPP8 inhibitor binding.

The effect of friction reduction in presence of ultrasonic vibrations and its relevance to travelling wave ultrasonic motors

In many ultrasonic applications frictional effects play an important role (e.g. ultrasonic machining, ultrasonic motors). For optimising the applications in terms of quality, efficiency and lifetime it is important to understand the frictional coupling of the vibrating and the non-vibrating part. This contribution is devoted to give an explanation for the reduction of friction forces which is often observed when ultrasonic vibrations are superimposed to macroscopic motions. Usually adopted coefficients of friction are used for modelling such conditions suggesting special frictional mechanisms for high frequency oscillations, whereas the present paper shows that Coulomb's friction law provides a very good description of the observed phenomena if the kinematics of the system is taken into account. Two systems are investigated. In the first system the ultrasonic and macroscopic movements are parallel and in the second they are perpendicular to each other but also within the plane of contact. Both systems were investigated analytically and experimentally using a specially designed test rig. The measurements confirmed the analytically derived equations and therefore the validity of Coulomb's friction law even for ultrasonic conditions.