Overview

The Molecular Observatory provides the Caltech community with exceptional capabilities in small molecule and macromolecular crystallography.

Macromolecular Crystallography

Funded by the Moore Foundation

• A high intensity, completely automated synchrotron radiation beam line at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) provides state-of-the-art data collection capabilities.
• An on-campus Macromolecular Crystallization Laboratory housed in the Beckman Institute provides robotic and manual facilities for protein crystallization.

Publications resulting from data collected through the support of the Molecular Observatory should acknowledge the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Beckman Institute, and the Sanofi-Aventis Bioengineering Research Program at Caltech for their generous support of the Molecular Observatory at Caltech. Operations at SSRL are supported by the US DOE and NIH.

Other Resources

• An in-house generator for crystal screening and data collection in the Macromolecular X-ray Crystallography Facility.

Small Molecule Crystallography

The Small Molecule X-ray Crystallography Facility obtains X-ray diffraction data from crystalline materials and determines the structures of small molecules from single-crystal diffraction data.