A multiwire proportional chamber as an area detector for protein crystallography

A multiwire proportional chamber (30 × 30 cm) together with its electronic readout into a large core memory (mass core) has been used successfully as a digital area detector for protein crystallography. The diffraction pattern stored in the mass core can be displayed on a TV monitor. An IBM 1800 computer has fast random access to the mass core and is used on line to estimate the integrated reflection intensities. To characterize this new area detector, the geometric linearity, the resolution and the quantum detection uniformity have been measured. Preliminary results show that with this new system one can collect intensity data from protein crystals about an order of magnitude faster than with the standard diffractometer.