Instrumentation and methods for efficient time-resolved X-ray crystallography of biomolecular systems with sub-10 ms time resolution

Methods and instrumentation for reaction initiation via mixing followed by rapid cooling allow sample-efficient time-resolved crystallographic studies with sub-10 ms time resolution. The instrumentation is robust, amenable to diverse samples, cost-effective and enables the remote collection of time-resolved X-ray data using standard sample supports and high-throughput cryocrystallography beamlines.

Time-resolved X-ray crystallography has great promise to illuminate structure–function relations and key steps of enzymatic reactions with atomic resolution. The dominant methods for chemically-initiated reactions require complex instrumentation at the X-ray beamline, significant effort to operate and maintain this instrumentation, and enormous numbers (∼10⁵–10⁹) of crystals per time point. We describe instrumentation and methods that enable high-throughput time-resolved study of biomolecular systems using standard crystallography sample supports and mail-in X-ray data collection at standard high-throughput cryocrystallography synchrotron beamlines. The instrumentation allows rapid reaction initiation by mixing of crystals and substrate/ligand solution, rapid capture of structural states via thermal quenching with no pre-cooling perturbations, and yields time resolutions in the single-millisecond range, comparable to the best achieved by any non-photo-initiated method in both crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy. Our approach to reaction initiation has the advantages of simplicity, robustness, low cost, adaptability to diverse ligand solutions and small minimum volume requirements, making it well suited to routine laboratory use and to high-throughput screening. We report the detailed characterization of instrument performance, present structures of binding of N-acetylglucosamine to lysozyme at time points from 8 ms to 2 s determined using only one crystal per time point, and discuss additional improvements that will push time resolution toward 1 ms.