Advanced Cryo-Electron Microscopy Facility

	Profile

The SRC Electron Microscopy Facility is located in the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) at the University of Queensland.

This $5 million facility is the Queensland node of the NANO-MNRF and was funded by the Queensland State Government, Federal Government and its development is supported by the SRC.
The Electron Microscopy facility has cutting edge electron microscopy equipment and is uniquely placed in Australia to provide high resolution data capture in the micron (10-6m) -Angstroem (10-9m) range.
The services we provide cover samples ranging from tissue sections, intact viruses right through to purified membrane protein complexes and soluble macromolecular assemblies above 500kDa in molecular weight. Smaller proteins can be structurally characterized in the form of 2D crystals.
Samples can be imaged in their near native state using cryo-techniques or after being fixed or stained.
Typically users collect this data for:
• Tomographic 3D reconstructions of subcellular volumes
• Solving the 3D structures of membrane protein complexes and macromolecular assemblies (>500kDa) using the process of Single particle analysis
• Solving the 3D structures of proteins using electron crystallography

Services
In the first phase of development this unit will offer the following services.
1. Negative stain sample preparation and preliminary imaging (in some instances this is provided FREE).
2. Negative stain single particle imaging to CCD
3. Cryo sample preparation
4. Cryo-single particle imaging to film
5. Cryo-single particle imaging to CCD
6. Fixed sectioning of tissues and cells
7. Room temperature tomography of tissue and cell sections
8. Developing negatives
9. Digitizing negatives

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