Oxford Diffraction Limited Announce Collaboration with York Structural Biology Laboratory to Evaluate New Protein Crystallography X-ray Diffractometer The York Structural Biology Laboratory (YSBL) and Oxford Diffraction Limited have today signed a heads of agreement to evaluate a new X-ray diffractometer, "Xcalibur PX Ultra", intended for protein crystallography.

The York Structural Biology Laboratory (YSBL) and Oxford Diffraction Limited have today signed a heads of agreement to evaluate a new X-ray diffractometer, "Xcalibur PX Ultra", intended for protein crystallography.

The "Xcalibur PX Ultra" will be launched at the British Crystallographic Association meeting to be held at York in April 2003. The new product will represent a major advance in Protein Crystallography in the home laboratory due its high performance, coupled with a low capital cost, a negligible cost of ownership and low maintenance down-time. Xcalibur-PX Ultra is a complete system that combines the recently launched ONYX large area charge-coupled-device (CCD) detector with the brand new "Enhance Ultra" X-ray source. The Xcalibur platform comprises the well-proven four-circle kappa diffractometer, which allows greater flexibility in data collection leading to greater data completeness.

The "Xcalibur PX Ultra" system has been developed, and is manufactured and distributed, by Oxford Diffraction Limited, an innovative X-ray diffraction company, based in Oxfordshire, UK, with a site in Wroclaw, Poland, and offices in Cologne, Germany, and Concord, MA, USA.

Oxford Diffraction's "ONYX" detector comprises a 165 mm diameter area with a pixel size of 60 microns and provides the best signal/noise readout coupled with the fastest readout times of any commercially available large area CCD detector in the field of crystallography.

Importantly, the sensitivity is highly uniform due to a single corner readout of the CCD imager and isothermal cooling, which is essential for assigning accurate intensities to weak signals in protein crystallography.

The "Enhance Ultra" X-ray source is a novel combination of optics, collimators and an adapted sealed tube source in a unique optical geometry. The result is a near 20-fold increase in the efficiency compared to standard sealed tube sources, taking the flux performance into the regime of rotating anodes. "Enhance Ultra" is compact, stable and requires almost no maintenance, apart from changing the X-ray tube once a year, making this a compelling proposition for the home laboratory.

Dr. Paul Loeffen, Managing Director of Oxford Diffraction Limited, said "I am delighted that such a high profile institute as YSBL is keen to collaborate with us to put Xcalibur-PX Ultra through its paces. We have an excellent working relationship and I look forward to the collaboration bearing fruit".