CSSB’s cryo-EM facility part of CUI funded JETFREEZING project
The Cluster of Excellence “CUI: Advanced Imaging of Matter” has recently awarded funds to the innovative, collaborative project JETFREEZING. The project will use a novel approach to time-resolved cryo-EM imaging by combining XFEL based sample delivery technologies with plunge freezing which ultimately seeks to investigate infectious processes at timescales of fractions of a microsecond.
State-of-the-art CryoEM is currently coming to the fore as a method for the determination of sub-2Å resolution structures of individual purified proteins and other biological complexes. CryoEM is also uniquely suited to classify a series of conformational changes in molecular complexes in order to investigate the regulation of biological processes. Despite large efforts in the cryoEM community, accessing timescales shorter than about 20 ms has remained difficult. We expect our novel approaches to expand the field for new studies at sub-millisecond time-scales thus providing more information about biomolecular dynamics and functions.
“JETFREEZING'’ combines CFEL groups’ expertise in coherent imaging techniques and innovative sample delivery approaches with the unique on-campus research infrastructures as available at the European XFEL and the Multi-User CryoEM facility at CSSB. To support the project, a postdoctoral fellow will soon be hired for two years. “We are all eager and excited for JETFREEZING to begin!” explains Carolin Seuring head of CSSB’s Multi-User CryoEM facility.
Workgroup: Saša Bajt, Henry Chapman, Armando Estillore, Kay Grünewald, Jochen Küpper, Tim Laugks, Thomas Marlovits, Alke Meents, Dominik Oberthür, Amit Samanta, Carolin Seuring
