Figure 2.

Example of an initial screening hit: (a) a patterned precipitate that owing to the poor resolution may at first glance not seem worthy of pursuit and (b) a progression of 16 experiments with decreasing protein concentration and increasing precipitant concentration produced by manipulating the ratio of protein volume to precipitate volume used in the original experimental drop (a). As the protein volume decreases and the precipitant volume increases, a point is reached where single crystals can clearly be observed from the visible images. The optimization process reveals that the original precipitate was microcrystalline. As in Fig. 1 ▶, each well has a diameter of 0.9 mm.