VMXm Data Collection

VMXm is primarily designed for single crystal rotation data collection. However, the radiation sensitive nature of microcrystals means that is difficult to collect a complete dataset from a single crystal. Therefore, a multi-crystal approach is employed at VMXm. Depending on the space group of the microcrystal, tens of crystals may need to be collected to build a complete dataset. Additionally, as the crystals are mounted on the 2D plane of a cryoEM grid, crystals will often preferentially orientate. It is therefore necessarily to change the start angle of each dataset so that different zones of reciprocal space are measured to build a complete dataset. Software tools such as DIALS Multiplex can then be used to merge the data and build the best quality dataset from the available diffraction data.

The pages in this section describe how to collect data at VMXm.

VMXm GDA with sample handling view.