CryoEM (cryo-electron microscopy) is a Nobel Prize-winning technique that revolutionised structural biology, accelerating progress in medicine, pharmacy, biology and biochemistry. This versatile method involves vitrification of samples in their native state by plunge freezing followed by imaging with a high-end transmission electron microscope (TEM) under cryogenic conditions. The “resolution revolution” (~2013) resulted in major breakthroughs in hardware and software such as more sensitive cameras and sophisticated data processing algorithms which have transformed EM images into high-resolution molecular structures. Modern CryoEM microscopes equipped with the newest energy filters can yield atomic-level structures even close to 1 Å resolution (Nakane et al., 2020), often published in top journals such as Nature or Science.

In 2019 the University of Warsaw purchased and installed one of the first fully dedicated Cryo-TEM instruments in the country: 200kV Glacios (Thermo Fisher Scientific), located at CeNT UW in the Cryomicroscopy and Electron Diffraction Core Facility (Ochota Kampus). The microscope was initially configured for the two major cryo-EM modalities: Single Particle Analysis and cryo tomography. However, in early 2021, thanks to the IDUB initiative for „Strengthening the core-facility potential on the Ochota Campus” our Facility was awarded a 5-mln PLN-worth grant to upgrade the microscope with the micro-crystal electron diffraction (micro-ED) module together with a professional IT infrastructure for storing and processing the cryo-EM data. This upgrade process has now been almost completed.
In this webinar we summarise recent activities at the Cryomicroscopy and Electron Diffraction Core Facility and discuss its current research possibilities. We also show some latest results from our users including a few structures of small molecules determined by the micro-ED approach as the first laboratory in Poland.