SAmBA: an interactive software for optimizing the design of biological macromolecules crystallization experiments
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 31, 2026
Automated Protocols for Macromolecular Crystallization at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
Published on: January 24, 2018
S Audic1, F Lopez, J M Claverie
1Information Génétique et Structurale, E.P. 91-C.N.R.S., Institut de Biologie Structurale et Microbiologie, Marseille, France.
Abstract:
SAmBA is a new software for the design of minimal experimental protocols using the notion of orthogonal arrays of strength 2. The main application of SAmBA is the search of protein crystallization conditions. Given a user input defining the relevant effectors/variables (e.g., pH, temperature, salts) and states (e.g., pH: 5, 6, 7 and 8), this software proposes an optimal set of experiments in which all tested variables and the pairwise interactions between them are symmetrically sampled. No a priori restrictions on the number and range of experimental variables is imposed. SAmBA consists of two complementary programs, SAm and BA, using a simulated annealing approach and a backtracking algorithm, respectively. The software is freely available as C code or as an interactive JAVA applet at http:/(/)igs-server.cnrs-mrs.fr.
