2013 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Multi-observation-port cuvette for solution scattering

Research Project

Project/Area Number	24657100
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	Biophysics
Research Institution	Institute for Molecular Science
Principal Investigator	AKIYAMA Shuji 分子科学研究所, 協奏分子システム研究センター, 教授 (50391842)
Project Period (FY)	2012-04-01 – 2014-03-31
Keywords	Ｘ線 / 散乱 / タンパク質
Research Abstract	Small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) is one of the powerful methods to evaluate the size and shape of macromolecules in solution. This project aims at improving a throughput of SAXS measurements by developing a multi-observation-port cuvette. According to the experimental trials so far we made, it was technically difficult to seal many observation ports so uniformly with a large-area quartz window. Thus, we had no choice but to make an alteration to the original plan so that the samples were semi-automatically supplied to a single-port cuvette with an auto-dispensing apparatus mounted on X-Y electronically actuating devices.