MS: ✗
BS: ✗

openAUC

For more information, see:

Cölfen H, Laue TM, Wohlleben W, Schilling K, Karabudak E, Langhorst BW, Brookes E, Dubbs B, Zollars D, Rocco M, Demeler B. The Open AUC Project. Eur Biophys J. 2010 Feb;39(3):347-59. doi: 10.1007/s00249-009-0438-9. Epub 2009 Mar 19. PMID: 19296095; PMCID: PMC2812709.

The goals of the Open AUC (Analytical Ultracentrifugation) Project are to stimulate AUC innovation by improving instrumentation, detectors, acquisition and analysis software, and collaborative tools. These improvements are needed for the next generation of AUC-based research. The Open AUC Project combines on-going work from several different groups. The openAUC project encompasses both hardware and software developments. All software will use the GNU Public License to assure that intellectual property is available in open source format.

As new instruments and software are being developed, their design offers an open architecture, hardware standards, and application programming interfaces for detector developers. The openAUC strategy facilitates collaborations, encourages sharing, and eliminates the chronic impediments that have plagued AUC innovation for the last 20 year.

It was found that if the Beckman AUC can be used for future AUC developments, it would need to:

  1. Have an open source communication protocol;

  2. Provide mounts for light sources and detectors outside the vacumn chamber, and provide windows for all optical paths;

  3. Offer multiple optical paths, and support simulataneous data aquisition by different optical systems;

4 Support a standard docking mechanisim;

  1. Offer specialized hardware and the software drivers needed to synchronize data acquisition.

The Multi-wavelength detector for the Beckman Optima XL was developed in Germany by Helmut Coelfen at the University of Konstanz with support from BASF (Wendel Wohlleben). Data acquisition software was developed by Johannes Walter at the University of Erlangen.