Microlytic Inc

Microlytic was founded in 2006 with the intention to use microfluidic technology to help solve the major problems in structural biology. Microlytic sought to develop and produce microfluidic chips that offered a high probability of crystallizing target proteins with a set-up that is simple and easy to use.

Microlytic developed microfluidic chips to let users grow crystals large enough to be used immediately for X-ray diffraction, plus give users direct access to the crystals themselves. These goals were realized with the development of the Crystal Former — the first microfluidic platform to allow users to go from crystallization screen to structure using a single device.

The advantages of the Crystal Former are:
Quick and easy setup — no external equipment is required
Maximum crystallization probability due to highly effective mixing kinetics
Direct access to crystals for subsequent seeding or diffraction studies
Compared to conventional techniques, the Crystal Former offers up to a 30-fold higher probability of successfully crystallizing target proteins.