Have you ever asked yourself this question? Sure you could mount the crystal in question and take a quick look at the diffraction pattern but perhaps you′re too lazy or you don′t have an x-ray facility. Well, there′s always the crush test. One simply takes a MicroTool™ or Crystal Probe™ and crushes the suspect crystal. A click or solid crunch is indicative of salt while a powder or silent destruction might indicate one just destroyed a perfectly good protein crystal. Izit is here to help. Simply place 1 µl of Izit in the sample drop and wait for an hour or so. Izit is a small molecule dye which will fill the solvent channels in protein crystals, coloring the crystals blue. With the appropriate dilution, Izit will in fact leave a clear drop with blue crystals, as illustrated in the picture above. Salt crystals do not possess these large solvent channels. Therefore, Izit cannot enter the crystal, leaving one with a clear crystal and a blue drop. Izit is especially nice for small microcrystals or questionable precipitate. The 0.5 ml vial of Izit is sufficient for more than thousands of crystallization drops.

Each Izit vial contains 0.5 ml of Izit dye. All solutions are formulated using ultra-pure water and are sterile filtered. Crystallization accessories are sold separately.