xtalPiMS: A PiMS-based web application for the management and monitoring of crystallization trials

A major advance in protein structure determination has been the advent of nanolitre-scale crystallization and (in a high-throughput environment) the development of robotic systems for storing and imaging crystallization trials. Most of these trials are carried out in 96-well (or higher density) plat...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of structural biology 2011-08, Vol.175 (2), p.230-235
Main Authors: Daniel, Ed, Lin, Bill, Diprose, Jonathan M., Griffiths, Susanne L., Morris, Chris, Berry, Ian M., Owens, Raymond J., Blake, Richard, Wilson, Keith S., Stuart, David I., Esnouf, Robert M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Crystallography, X-Ray
Data management and databases
Database Management Systems
Databases, Protein
Information Management - methods
Java web application
Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS)
Online Systems
Protein crystallization
Proteins - chemistry
Robotic imagers
User-Computer Interface
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Summary:A major advance in protein structure determination has been the advent of nanolitre-scale crystallization and (in a high-throughput environment) the development of robotic systems for storing and imaging crystallization trials. Most of these trials are carried out in 96-well (or higher density) plates and managing them is a significant information management challenge. We describe xtalPiMS, a web-based application for the management and monitoring of crystallization trials. xtalPiMS has a user-interface layer based on the standards of the Protein Information Management System (PiMS) and a database layer which links the crystallization trial images to the meta-data associated with a particular crystallization trial. The user interface has been optimized for the efficient monitoring of high-throughput environments with three different automated imagers and work to support a fourth imager is in progress, but it can even be of use without robotics. The database can either be a PiMS database or a legacy database for which a suitable mapping layer has been developed.
ISSN:1047-8477
1095-8657
DOI:10.1016/j.jsb.2011.05.008