Re:Cryo-electron microscopy breaks a key barrier
by m4rtink on Thursday June 04, 2020 @06:45PM
(#23422869)
Cryo EM is really cool (not just in temperature! ;-) ) technology! :) Recently I had a chance to go on a tour in the two-part CEITEC research center in Brno, a city with long history of electron microscopy manufacturing and research.
One part of the CEITEC research center does "dry" tech - chemistry, robotics, motor and machine control and chips. Of course, they have quite a lot of cutting edge electron microscopes to image various nano structures. All looking super high tech as you watch their shiny metal over the clean room window. All the machines stand on concrete slabs embedded into the hill below the building to avoid vibrations and have ultra high vacuum inside.
The other part of CEITEC does "wet" research - proteins, cells, bacteria, microorganisms. Of course also they have cutting edge, cry electron microscopes. These looked quite different to the other ones - it was a huge black cube, reaching almost the high ceiling of the room. You could not see all the glistening internal components like in the previous case. In this case they even let us to the room itself - apparently given all the volatiles in the samples, the cleanliness requirements in the room containing the machine are not as strict & it likely (my guess) needs to keep quite a bit part of the machine at very low temperatures, explaining all the covers. IIRC the software controlling the camera runs on Linux & engineers from Brno working for one of the big EM manufacturers were involved in building this enormous cryo EM machine, which was a pretty nice touch. :)
One part of the CEITEC research center does "dry" tech - chemistry, robotics, motor and machine control and chips. Of course, they have quite a lot of cutting edge electron microscopes to image various nano structures. All looking super high tech as you watch their shiny metal over the clean room window. All the machines stand on concrete slabs embedded into the hill below the building to avoid vibrations and have ultra high vacuum inside.
The other part of CEITEC does "wet" research - proteins, cells, bacteria, microorganisms. Of course also they have cutting edge, cry electron microscopes. These looked quite different to the other ones - it was a huge black cube, reaching almost the high ceiling of the room. You could not see all the glistening internal components like in the previous case. In this case they even let us to the room itself - apparently given all the volatiles in the samples, the cleanliness requirements in the room containing the machine are not as strict & it likely (my guess) needs to keep quite a bit part of the machine at very low temperatures, explaining all the covers. IIRC the software controlling the camera runs on Linux & engineers from Brno working for one of the big EM manufacturers were involved in building this enormous cryo EM machine, which was a pretty nice touch. :)