300 keV FEG Electron Cryo Microscope for Tomography

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Molecular and cellular electron cryo tomography (cryoET) enables studies of macromolecules directly in their native environment and under native concentrations of their interaction partners. This is of particular relevance for mechanistic analyses of basic biological processes. In a modern integrative structural biology approach that combines a range of methods to answer a biological questions, cryoET takes a central role, as it sits at the cross road of dynamic information from (super-resolution-) fluorescence microscopy and highest resolution structural information from X-ray crystallography, NMR und single particle cryoEM. In the context of infection biology questions (a major research focus in Hamburg) cryoET provides a central tool for the investigation of the various levels of host-pathogen interactions. There is respective expertise in cryoET, integrative and correlative integrative cryo microscopies and their further advancement in Hamburg through the recruitment of Kay Grünewald. CryoET of thicker cellular samples has specific hard and software requirements. These include very stable sample stages with robotic sample changes, high-precision tilting, energy filtering, phase plates und latest generation direct electron detectors allowing for electron counting. In comparison to single particle projects cryoET projects are more time consuming and hence justify, combined between a major user and the range of other university groups with respective biological applications, a dedicated and complementary instrument that will be used to full capacity.