Staff at a Sunnyvale-based lab equipment supplier had no idea the company’s products were being used in coronavirus research until they saw it on the news.
NBC News aired a March 21 segment about the work being done at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus. As reporter Gabe Gutierrez chats with researchers at the Maryland facility, a Crystal Gryphon from Art Robbins Instruments (ARI) can be seen briefly in the background.
ARI General Manager David Wright says the Gryphon’s on-camera appearance was the first sighting of a company product on the front lines of COVID-19 research. The machine is used along with ARI’s Scorpion Liquid Handling Work Station in the X-ray crystallography process, where proteins are isolated and crystalized for use in creating images of the virus.
Wright says the Scorpion “sets up a place to grow the crystals,” while the Gryphon lets researchers experiment with solutions that draw liquid out of protein samples so they crystalize.
“You can change the Ph and the concentration to get crystals,” Wright says, adding that there’s a bit of trial and error involved. “It’s not a completely scientific process.”
At Walter Reed, researchers are crystalizing portions of the coronavirus then sending them to Argonne National Laboratory in Lamont, Illinois, where they’re bombarded with X-rays. The scattering of X-rays by the crystal can be measured to determine the virus’s atomic structure, Wright says.
“It just looks like a bunch of dots,” he adds. “Through software, you can tell at the atomic level what the dots mean.”
In the case of the coronavirus, the dots have revealed that the spikes covering the outside of the spherical virus penetrate cells in the human body and cause infections. Walter Reed is using images of these spikes to glean information that helps develop a vaccine.
This technology was in its infancy when ARI was founded in 2003. At that point, researchers had to rely on artistic renderings of viruses rather than high-resolution images of the real thing.
“Almost everything was done by hand,” Wright recalls. “At the first conference I went to, the guy who literally wrote the book on protein crystallography gave a talk on ‘Automation: Who Needs It?’ He saw one of our products and changed his mind.”
Using the Gryphon, he says, researchers can get results six to eight times faster than if they worked by hand. “And it doesn’t make mistakes.”
Wright says ARI is reaching out to other organizations doing coronavirus research to see if the company’s products are needed. Meanwhile, he says, staff is happy knowing its products are being used to help stop the virus from spreading.
“Everyone is thrilled to see that,” Wright adds. “It’s a big energy boost to see our stuff successfully used.”
