Recent advances in automation of X-ray crystallographic beamlines at the EMBL hamburg outstation

The use of synchrotron radiation has had a marked affect on the rate at which high resolution models of biomolecules are obtained. While there are a number of sources at which protein crystallographic experiments can be performed, with others under construction, there still remains a high demand for data collection beamtime. As a result efforts have been made to automated various stages of a protein crystallographic experiment in order to improve efficiency of beamtime usage. While a number of the steps in a successful protein crystallographic structure determination have been automated it is not yet possible to build a full automated beamline as a number of central technologies have yet to be developed. Recent developments in automation and robotics will be discussed and areas in which development is required in order to produce a fully integrated and automated beamline will be outlined.