Integrated Controlling System and Unified Database for High Throughput Protein Crystallography Experiments

An integrated controlling system and a unified database for high throughput protein crystallography experiments have been developed. Main features of protein crystallography experiments (purification, crystallization, crystal harvesting, data collection, data processing) were integrated into the software under development. All information necessary to perform protein crystallography experiments is stored (except raw X‐ray data that are stored in a central data server) in a MySQL relational database. The database contains four mutually linked hierarchical trees describing protein crystals, data collection of protein crystal and experimental data processing. A database editor was designed and developed. The editor supports basic database functions to view, create, modify and delete user records in the database. Two search engines were realized: direct search of necessary information in the database and object oriented search. The system is based on TCP/IP secure UNIX sockets with four predefined sending and...