April 2024 Newsletter

April 26, 2024

Vendor recognition

MiTeGen - MiTeGen has been the number one supplier for all of Helix's crystallography and cryo-EM supplies since our inception. "What is great is we can get crystal screens, cryo-EM grids, pucks, and shipping supplies, even made by other vendors, all from MiTeGen" says CEO of Helix, Josh Carter. Backed with a garantee of satisfaction and an absolutely amazing sales and tech team, you can't go wrong with buying from MiTeGen. Interested in MiTeGen's new products and lineup of crystal/cryo-EM supplies? Visit their website or reach out to Joyce Frank (joyce@mitegen.com) to order.

MiTeGen

Employee spotlight

John Kim - Post-Doctoral FellowJohn is an emerging scientist who is deeply intrigued by the relationship between protein structure and function. Through nine years of focused academic pursuit, he has honed his expertise in various domains, including X-ray crystallography, NMR spectroscopy, and protein production.

Featured service

Protein Crystallography

‍Helix is the leading protein crystallography services company in the United States. With over 60 commercial screens and speciallized robotic liquid handling, Helix is able to produce crystal structures at high quality and with industrial efficiency for all our customers. Additionally, Helix has scheduled synchrotron time every week, allowing crystals to be collected shortly after they have grown. Armed with over 10 gene-to-structure scientists and liceneses to both CCP4 and Phenix, we are your one stop shop for all your crystallography needs. Contact us today to learn more!

Helix highlights

In March, the Helix team had a Media Day and had so much fun taking everyone's headshot photos and recording short videos to showcase our team members and new lab space with a number of great instruments. This will be featured on our new website, which we are currently working on creating.

The new Helix BioStructures' website will have lots of cool content, images you will enjoy, and information about our services (Protein Production, Biophysical Characterization, X-ray Crystallography, X-ray Data Collection, cryo-EM) that will be very beneficial for your research and development. Stay tuned! :-)

Instrument review

Vitrobot Mark IV

The Thermo Scientific Vitrobot Mark IV System offers semi-automated vitrification to provide fast, easy, and reproducible sample preparation for cryo-EM. It performs the cryo-fixation process at constant physical and mechanical conditions like temperature, relative humidity, blotting conditions, and freezing velocity. This ensures high-quality cryo-fixation results and a high sample preparation throughput prior to cryo-TEM observation.We are equipped with a Vitrobot Mark IV System in-house and can prepare grids without freezing protein samples. This will allow us to produce the highest quality cryo-EM data and images to define protein structures for our customers. Contact us today to discuss how we can help you with your cryo-EM projects.