120kV Cryo Transmission Electron Microscope

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With the current proposals two lines of electron microscopy studies will be strongly enhanced at Heidelberg Campus: With two more cryo TEMs (one low-end and one medium/high-end) a stringent sample workflow is established, which allows the screening of a large number of samples for Single Particle Analysis (SPA) before using time for ultimate-resolution imaging at our existing high-end cryo TEM. Such an expansion of microscope time for SPA is absolutely necessary for a planned professorship in macromolecular biochemistry – which will further add to the increasing demands of all biomedical institutes. At the same time, such a screening workflow on supporting microscopes will reduce the workload on our existing high-end cryo instrument and will free time for additional Cryo Electron Tomography (CET) studies. With the hiring of additional junior faculty it is mandatory to increase instrument time for such work. We recently upgraded our dedicated high-end cryo TEM with a post energy filter Direct Electron Detector, which now will allow state-of-the-art cryo CET work. However, it is also most important to establish the necessary cryo-lamella sample preparation platform to image macromolecular complexes in their cellular environment, as well as to optimize tomographic data collection by adding most advanced physical phase plate technology. In the end, this latter optimization will also help any macromolecular imaging work, in particular the planned studies on small protein complexes.