Our facility have two transmission electron microscopes, and an extensive range of equipment for sample preparations.
Instruments include:
Microscopes
JEM-2100Plus (Cryo-EM facility)
Jeol JEM 2100 plus is a multipurpose 200kV LaB6 transmission electron microscope primarily used in cryo-EM projects for achieving high resolution imaging and structural analysis of biological samples.
It is equipped with a 16-megapixel Oneview camera (Gatan), and images are collected through serialEM software.
As a member of the LonCEM consortium, SBBS has access to the Titan Krios hosted in the Crick Institute and the Cryo-EM specialist will facilitate access.
JEM-1400 Flash
This microscope is housed in ‘The Nanovision Centre’. Is specialised for high contrast samples and is routinely used for ultrastructure analysis of tissues and cells as well as negatively stained samples.
Works at accelerating voltage of 120 kV and uses a Tungsten electron gun.
A side-entry non-cooled Morada 2K camera is seen, coloured silver, at the bottom left hand side of the main column.
It also has a Orius (Gatan) camera bottom mounted, for high resolution of negatively stained protein particles.
EM GP2 (Leica)
The EM GP2 is a fully automated plunge freeze.
It is an extremely versatile tool for cryo-grid preparation and optimization of the freezing conditions.
It has a humidity and temperature controlled chamber, adjustable between +4°C and +60°C and room humidity to 99 %.
It works by allowing freezing of fluid or extremely thin samples spread on an electron microscopy grid into liquid ethane after removing excess fluid by automatic blotting.
It offers a high level of reproducibility, ensuring that samples are consistently prepared for cryo-EM imaging.
626 Cryo-Holder (Gatan)
This is a Single Tilt Liquid Nitrogen Cryo Transfer Holder, is designed for low temperature transfer of frozen hydrated specimens for cryo electron microscopy. The holder allows precise control of the sample temperature, ensuring that samples remain vitrified and at cryogenic temperatures to preserve their native structure. It is designed with user-friendliness in mind, allowing researchers to easily load and manipulate samples.
Reichert-Jung Ultracut E Ultramicrotome
Reichert-Jung made a venerable Ultracut E Ultramicrotome, which is ideal for us to obtain Semi and ultra-thin sections, using both diamond and glass knives to thinly slice resin-embedded samples.
It is routinely used for resin embedded tissue and cells or plastic material.
Thermo Fisher Grid Clipping station
The Thermo Fisher Grid Clipping station is equipped with tools for precise and safe clipping of cryoEM grids, ensuring that the grids fits well into autoloader-based microscope such as Krios, Talos. They are compatible with various types of grids used in electron microscopes.
EM ACE900 Freeze Fracture System (Leica)
The freeze fracture technique has been used in QMUL to study thylakoid membranes transmembrane protein abundancy and distribution in different growing condition. This powerful tool allows the observation of delicate features of a sample in its native state as the sample is frozen before fracture happens under a high vacuum environment.
A freshly produced fracture is coated with Pt and carbon to highlight the structures and obtain a replica that can be analysed by TEM.
Freeze fracture and freeze etching allow to visualize very fine cell details also SEM by direct block face scanning.