Silicon Mechanics Compute Cluster

 产品说明：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，重点是生物组件的分子EM。该设施旨在满足UMICH内外科学界对高分子复合物的最先进可视化和结构表征日益增长的需求。该冷冻EM套件已经包括一台100 kV、一台120 kV和一台200 kV透射电子显微镜（TEM），不久将拥有一台高分辨率300 kV TEM。这一扩展是基于该设施运营的前5年的成功（20多个高影响力的出版物）以及在应用、数据质量和吞吐量方面扩展其成像能力的需求。目前专用于EM的计算平台非常有限，并且代表了数据的图像处理的主要瓶颈，特别是对于需要数千个图像的单粒子EM项目。鉴于低温EM数据的输出将增加几倍，与200和300千伏TEM的结合使用，都配备了新的直接电子探测器和自动图像采集算法，本提案要求资金购买一个强大的计算集群，其中包括96个节点，共1152个CPU核心。这个高端集群将促进大型冷冻EM数据集的处理，计算要求高的图像处理算法的实施，以及多个项目的并行处理。结合我们强大的TEM平台，这种先进的计算机系统的加入将使许多项目能够快速和复杂的冷冻EM图像处理，从中到高分辨率解决重要生物组件的结构。这些技术的结合将补充UMICH内外众多由NIH资助的成熟生物学项目。为了本申请的目的，我们包括了一些项目说明，这些项目将大大受益于该仪器的采购。

 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.