Cryo-EM Seminar @ ITQB NOVA - Cesar Santiago

IMpaCT project is happy to sponsor the Cryo-EM seminar with our expert guest, Cesar Santiago, from CNB-CSIC.

This seminar will be one of the plenary sessions planned for the 2nd National Crystallographic Meeting.

Date: 16 July 2022

Time: 15h15 Lisbon time // 16h15 CET

Webinar: Zoom session

Microelectron diffraction implementation at the CNB cryoelectron microscopy facility

Cesar Santiago

National Centre for Biotechnology of the Spanish Research Council (CNB-CSIC)

Cryoelectron Microscopy (Cryo-EM) has emerged as one of the most powerful tools in the field of structure biology since the advent of the resolution revolution in the field. New software on image analysis and specially the new hardware used for data collection has positioned the technique at the front of the techniques in molecule structure resolution. A variant of Cryo-EM is the microelectron (MicroED) diffraction of nano crystals, in which the transmission electron microscope is used to diffract crystals of the complete range of molecules that could be crystallized: from small compounds to macromolecules. The flexibility and power of this technique allows us to solve the structure of the crystalized molecules with almost no sample used and in a very short period of time.

We have implemented a robust protocol for MicroED at CNB’s CryoEM facility that allows us to solve the structure of a varied range of samples from different users. We are convinced that the established workflow would be of great help to assist researchers from a wide range of scientific concerns, in solving molecules crucial in their investigations.

Figure 1: Workflow for the structure resolution at 0.6 Å of a small compound using microelectron diffraction.

Acknowledgements

This research work was also funded by the European Commission – NextGenerationEU (Regulation EU 2020/2094), through CSIC's Global Health Platform (PTI Salud Global).