{"id":22518,"date":"2023-12-04T09:16:53","date_gmt":"2023-12-04T14:16:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/ppb\/?page_id=22518"},"modified":"2025-10-01T13:40:21","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T17:40:21","slug":"structural-cryoem","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/ppb\/structural-cryoem\/","title":{"rendered":"Structural CryoEM"},"content":{"rendered":"

Structural electron microscopy facility<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Department of Pharmacology, Physiology and Biophysics in the Center for Advanced Biomedical Research (CABR) houses a pair of cryogenic capable, electron microscopes for use in visualizing biological nano-structures in negative stain or frozen vitreous buffer. The Structural EM suite consists of 4 rooms in total (~900 square feet) with sample preparation room and a grid freezing room; the latter is maintained as a contiguous dry space with the microscope rooms (~8-15% RH), with a Harris Environmental Systems humidity control system. For grid freezing, Vitrobot Mark 3 and Mark 4 plunge freezing robots are available to all Departmental users along with a Nanosoft grid mounting\/clipping station with stereo dissecting microscope and cryotools to prepare grids for insertion and visualization on automated ThermoFisher electron cryo-microscopes equipped with autoloaders. An outer support room houses a Denton carbon evaporator, a glow discharge unit, a Gatan dual cold holder pumping station and cryo-storage dewars.<\/p>\n

Conventional cryo-TEM \u201cbubble\u201d microscopes –<\/strong><\/p>\n

CM12<\/strong>: A cryo-CM12 with dedicated Gatan 60\u00ba cold stage is available for Departmental users and for cryo-EM training. The CM12 has computer-controlled stage position and relocation software\/hardware with an upgraded external computer to run the low dose kit. The microscope is equipped with a LaB6 filament and a 2k x 2k TemCam-F216 camera (TVIPS) for cryo-imaging.<\/p>\n

Tecnai F20:<\/strong> The Structural EM Facility contains a Tecnai F20, a Field Emission Gun electron microscope for cryogenic imaging with a 4k X 4k TemCam 416 CMOS camera (TVIPs) with separate imaging PC and monitor running EM-MENU4, EM-tools, and Serial-EM. The CMOS camera and software are used for automated data collection for single particle analysis, tomography and to optimize samples for data collection on automated cryo-electron microscopes at National cryo-EM beamlines or in the new Boston University cryo-EM core facility, located on the Medical School Campus. There are 2 dedicated Gatan cold holders (DH676), 60 and 70 degree tilt, and an Oxford cryo-holder for the TF20. The microscope PC has been rebuilt to provide a stable system for imaging and data collection.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Cryo-capable electron microscopes in the Structural EM facility including the CM12 (top left) and Tecnai F20 (right and lower panels).<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Vitrobot Mark 3 (top) and Mark 4 (bottom right) grid plunging robots with accessories, including a Nanosoft grid mounting station(bottom left).<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
General equipment including: Gatan pumping station and storage dewars (top), Denton carbon evaporator and glow discharge instrument (bottom left). A 6 node Linux cluster with 192 CPU, 24 GPU and a 50 Tb RAID is located in an adjacent server room and used for single particle and tomographic data processing (Akey research group, bottom right).<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Department EM user pages:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Christopher Akey<\/a>
\nEsther Bullitt<\/a>
\nWilliam Lehman<\/a>
\nClint Makino<\/a>
\nOlga Gursky<\/a><\/p>\n

Cryogenic EM Core Facility<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Structural electron microscopy facility The Department of Pharmacology, Physiology and Biophysics in the Center for Advanced Biomedical Research (CABR) houses a pair of cryogenic capable, electron microscopes for use in visualizing biological nano-structures in negative stain or frozen vitreous buffer. The Structural EM suite consists of 4 rooms in total (~900 square feet) with sample […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1811,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":25,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-templates\/no-sidebars.php","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/ppb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/22518"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/ppb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/ppb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/ppb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1811"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/ppb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22518"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/ppb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/22518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24002,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/ppb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/22518\/revisions\/24002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/ppb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}