CLIMS: crystallography laboratory information management system.

Macromolecular crystallography requires simple yet effective means of organizing and managing the large amounts of data generated by crystallization experiments. There are several freely available web-based Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) that assist in these tasks. These, however, rely on the limited user interfaces allowed in HTML-based web pages. To address this limitation, a new LIMS for protein crystallization, which features a novel rich graphical user interface (GUI) to a relational database, has been developed. This application, which is called CLIMS (Crystallography LIMS), assists in all aspects of protein-crystallization projects: protein expression, handling, crystallization optimization, visualization of results and preliminary diffraction data. Extensive use of templates, particularly for commercial screens and common optimization grid screens, exploits the redundancy in experimental setups. The crystallization tray is the central focus of the graphical interface, thus facilitating rapid visualization and annotation of results. CLIMS was developed specifically to cater for the needs of individual laboratories requiring an intuitive and robust system for managing crystallization experiments and is freely available.