Robotic protein handling

The Rigaku Actor robotic protein crystal handling system for automated crystal sample mounting and storage eliminates much of the physical handling of samples by crystallographers during routine screening and data collection in the laboratory or at the beamline.

It is an automated system designed to store frozen protein crystals, mount them sequentially, align them to the X-ray beam, collect complete data sets and return the crystals to storage.

The Actor automated crystal mounting and data collection technology was co-developed by Rigaku with Oceaneering Space Systems (OSS), a division of Oceaneering International, under a license from Abbott Laboratories for the purpose of offering a commercial high-throughput crystallography automation system. In 2002, the Rigaku Actor was honoured with an R&D 100 Award for technical innovation. In 2005, Rigaku introduced a version of robot for small molecule chemical crystallography called the Actor SM.