Silicon Mechanics Compute Cluster

 描述：密歇根大学结构生物学中心在校园内建立了第一个冷冻电子显微镜(Cryo-EM)设施，专注于生物组装的分子EM。该设施旨在满足密歇根大学内外科学界对最先进的大分子复合体的可视化和结构表征的日益增长的需求。已经包括100千伏、120千伏和200千伏透射电子显微镜的CRYO-EM套件将很快拥有一台高分辨率的300千伏透射电子显微镜。这一扩张是基于该设施头5年的成功运营(20多种高影响力出版物)，以及在应用、数据质量和吞吐量方面扩展其成像能力的需要。目前专门用于EM的计算平台非常有限，是数据图像处理的主要瓶颈，特别是对于需要数千幅图像的单粒子EM项目。考虑到联合使用200千伏和300千伏的TEM将使低温电磁数据的产量增加数倍，这两种设备都配备了新的直接电子探测器和自动图像采集算法，因此，本提案要求提供资金，用于购置一个强大的计算机群，其中包括96个节点，总共有1152个中央处理器核心。这一高端集群将促进处理大型低温EM数据集、执行计算要求高的图像处理算法以及多个项目的并行处理。与我们强大的瞬变电子显微镜平台相结合，这一先进的计算机系统的加入将使许多项目能够快速而复杂地处理低温EM图像，解决从中分辨率到高分辨率的重要生物组件的结构。这些技术的结合将补充密歇根州立大学内外由NIH资助的许多成熟的生物项目。为了本申请的目的，我们包括了一些项目说明，这些项目说明将极大地受益于这一文书的收购。

 DESCRIPTION: The Center for Structural Biology at the University of Michigan has established the first cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) facility on campus with a focus on molecular EM of biological assemblies. The facility aims to serve the growing needs of the scientific community within and outside UMICH towards state-of-the-art visualization and structural characterization of macromolecular complexes. The cryo-EM suite, which already includes a 100kV, a 120 kV, and a 200 kV transmission electron microscope (TEM), will soon host a high-resolution 300 kV TEM. This expansion is based on the success of the first 5 years of the facility's operation (more than 20 high-impact publications) and the need to extend its imaging capabilities in terms of applications, quality of data, and throughput. The current computational platform dedicated to EM is very limited and represents a major bottleneck for image processing of data, especially for single particle EM projects requiring many thousands of images. Given that the output of cryo-EM data will increase several fold with the combined use of the 200 and the 300 kV TEMs, both equipped with new direct electron detectors and automated image acquisition algorithms, the present proposal requests the funds for the acquisition of a powerful compute cluster that includes 96 nodes with a total of 1152 CPU cores. This high-end cluster will facilitate the processing of large cryo-EM datasets, the implementation of computationally demanding image processing algorithms, as well as the parallel processing for multiple projects. Combined with our powerful TEM platform, the addition of this advanced computer system will enable the rapid and sophisticated cryo-EM image processing for many projects addressing the structure of important biological assemblies from intermediate to high resolution. The combination of these technologies will complement numerous NIH- funded projects of well-established biological programs within and outside UMICH. For the purpose of this application, we include a number of project descriptions that would greatly benefit from the acquisition of this instrument.