Patent Watch: Microfabricated Tools and Crystallization Plates

Join Our Community of Science Lovers!

On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

Microfabricated tools and crystallization plates: Proteins catalyze reactions, shape cells and relay signals through the body. To understand how they work, researchers first figure out proteins' 3-D shape. Part of that process involves crystallizing proteins on rectangular plates with hundreds of individual wells. Current tools for protein crystallization have flaws: tiny tools to manipulate the protein crystals are rigid, vibrate easily and can damage fragile samples. Frustrated with the fuss, physicist Robert Thorne of Cornell University developed new tools and plates.

Patent No. 8,210,057 describes tools formed from plastic film. A gentle curve in the tools lends them strength—they are thin without being floppy. This same strategy is used by leaves and petals in nature, Thorne notes. One of the tools has “fingers” that can bend and gently grip protein crystals. Patent No. 7,666,259 details a new kind of protein crystallization plate, in which wells are replaced by micropatterned film. Drops stick to the surface even when the plate is upside down—held in place by surface tension from printed rings just 25 microns tall. The tools are already on the market, and the plates will be available later this year.

Subscribe to Support Independent Journalism

Great science journalism requires human expertise, time, effort and creativity. And it costs money. That’s why I and the journalists here at Scientific American hope you’ll join our community.

When you subscribe, you are supporting staff and freelance journalists who are passionate about telling science stories that are true, important and compelling. Our editors and reporters are often experts in their fields, which means they understand the nuances of big discoveries and can untangle the breakthroughs from the hype. With a subscription, you are also supporting rigorous fact-checking to ensure the words we publish are precise and accurate. And you’re supporting original illustrations, graphics and photos that bring you closer to an advanced laboratory, an ice sheet in Antarctica or a space mission in orbit. You’re helping us craft other types of high-quality journalism as well: Our newsletters are carefully written, edited and curated by staffers you have or will come to know and love. Our Science Quickly podcast is based on original reporting, collaboration with editors and scientists and exacting production.

Subscriptions keep this engine running so we can continue to deliver thoughtful, rigorous and independent science journalism to you. In an era of viral misinformation, this work is crucial. If you value what we do, I hope you’ll consider joining us as a subscriber

Thank you,

Jeanna Bryner, Editor in Chief, Scientific American