Improved screening cababilites for cryo electron microscopy at the SciLifeLab national Cryo-EM facility

The rapid development of cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) has empowered structural biology by accelerating structure determinations of biological macromolecules and even allowing structural studies of intact organelles and cells.

Sweden’s strategic decision to support a national cryo-EM facility provided democratized access to costly state-of-the-art infrastructure and allowed the entire national research community to compete internationally at the fore-front of structural biology.

The goal of SciLifeLab’s national Cryo-EM facility, with its two nodes in Stockholm and Umeå, is to support the Swedish structural biology community by providing high-end instrument access along with user training and community building.

The success of the two cryo-EM nodes is reflected in a rising number of active projects and collaborations, high-impact research output, and instruments used to full capacity.To prepare the national cryo-EM facilities for the increasing demand, improve equipment usage significantly, and provide infrastructure for coming advances in structural biology methods, we apply for co-funding for a Glacios 200 kV TEM, serving as a cryo-EM grid screening microscope at the Umeå node, together with a micro-electron diffraction (micro-ED) hardware upgrade for the Stockholm node.

The 200 kV TEM will be capable of high-quality single-particle data acquisition, electron tomography, and micro-ED, thus both adding new national EM capacity as well as improving usage of existing 300 kV microscopes to which it may serve as a gatekeeper.

The proposed instrument can be installed in existing premises at the Umeå node without any construction work and operated by already trained existing staff.

The strong support from major stakeholders, including approved co-funding from SciLifeLab, and the user feedback to increase screening capacity, highlights the importance of this investment to prepare the national cryo-EM infrastructure for the future challenges in structural biology.