The Versatile Macromolecular X-tallography in-situ(VMXi) beamline is an entirely automated facility for characterisation of, and data collection directly from, crystallisation experiments in situ.
There are four key advantages of in situ diffraction:
- Experiments can be carried out without any manipulation of individual crystals, thus preserving the crystal integrity.
- It provides immediate feedback on the diffraction, crystal quality and, in many cases, unit-cell parameters, space group, even in the case of micro-crystals (2-5 μm).
- The method can be fully automated with high reliability.
- It provides a route for data collection from crystals that consistently lose all diffraction when conventionally harvested, or else are hazardous and may not be harvested for safety reasons.