we proposed a new processing technique for protein crystals, pulsed UV laser soft ablation (PULSA) . Several kinds of protein crystals were successfully processed by laser irradiation at a wavelength of 193 nm. Unchanged resolution limit between pre- and post-processings in X-ray diffraction measurements showed PULSA had little influence on the crystallinity of the non-irradiated section. This technique will be a powerful tool for processing fragile biological-macromolecule crystals and will accelerate protein structural analysis.
