Crystallisation plates used in this study.

aThis plate was set up for hanging-drop crystallisation, using an adhesive hanging-drop tape rather than a drop well for the protein drops; information on both the plate and the tape is given.
bPlate material is taken from manufacturer's information. COC; cyclic olefin copolymer, PZero; Zero polarization polymer.
cDistance from the bottom of the reservoir to the bottom of the sitting-drop well or to the hanging-drop tape, as per manufacturer's information.
dNtot is the total number of drops with crystals at 37 days, with a theoretical maximum value of Ntot is 72.
gPEG 4000 concentration (% w/v) after 37 days is averaged for 12 replicates (see methods). Values are given for mean (±95% confidence intervals, or where no variation was observed in the 12 replicates, error calculated from the error of the instrument).
#The PEG 4000 concentration after 37 days is significantly different from the starting concentration of 10% (w/v).
hValues for water absorption (after immersion at 23°C for 24 hours) of the plate material are taken from the Goodfellow index of materials (www.goodfellow.com; Goodfellow Corporation, Oakdale, PA, USA) (and for COC from www.polyplastics.com/en/product/lines/topas/TOPAS.pdf Polyplastics Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan). We were unable to find values for plate material of plates 8 and 10 but our PEG 4000 concentration results suggest that the former is water permeable and the latter has very low water permeability.