Services

The CryoEM Facility at Janelia Research Campus provides services to all HHMI labs and their collaborators. The facility is an HHMI-wide shared facility with state-of-the-art instrumentation and strong staff expertise, offering services to cover the entire CryoEM workflow. It hosts three FEI Titan Krios cryo transmission electron microscopes (cryo TEMs), an FEI Aquilos cryo Focused Ion Beam Scanning Electron Microscope (cryo FIBSEM), multiple cryo grids preparation equipment and screening TEM microscopes.

Main services

1. High-quality high-throughput single particle or cryo electron tomography (cryo ET) data collection on ready-to-image cryo grids prepared and provided by users
   In this case, the facility does not help calibrate samples, prepare grids, or process data. Users
   are required to supply CryoEM images from their cryo grids before collecting data for a new project. The purpose of this requirement is to ensure that the cryo grids and samples are of acceptable quality, to use microscope capacity at the facility most responsibly. The user can either come to Janelia or work remotely. In either case, facility staff will operate the microscope, optimize imaging conditions/parameters, and set up automated data collection while users can focus on selecting targets for data collection. Both single particle and cryoET data collection are fully supported. 

2. Cryo FIB milling on thick frozen hydrate samples to produce lamella for cryo TEM imaging

For user-provided frozen hydrate samples that are too thick to image directly on a Krios cryo TEM such as cells frozen on an EM grid, we offer an FEI Aquilos Cryo FIBSEM to mill regions of interest into thin lamellas. The lamellas can then be loaded into a Krios cryoTEM microscope for imaging or tomography data collection. To help locate regions of interest before cryoFIB milling, a Leica Thunder cryoCLEM light microscope is available to image the cryo-EM grid.

3. Collaboration work on other aspects of the cryoEM workflow

If needed, a lab can collaborate with the facility on other aspects of the cryoEM workflow such as cryo grids preparation and screening, image processing and 3D reconstruction. The lab can provide the facility a sample which is not ready for cryoEM imaging such as protein complexes in solution, cultured cells or tissues. The facility calibrates the sample and carries out portions or all of the cryoEM-related work on suitable samples, from cryo grid freezing/screening or cryo FIB milling, to large volume data collection, to image processing and 3D reconstruction.

Access

All HHMI labs and their collaborators have access to the Janelia CryoEM facility. The facility provides an online scheduler for users to register. https://cryoem-scheduler.janelia.org/

If a user has ready to image cryo grids, they can follow the guideline on the scheduler and book equipment time themselves. If a user needs more help, has technical questions or wants to initiate a collaboration with the cryoEM facility, they can either contact the facility director, Dr. Zhiheng Yu, at yuz10@janelia.hhmi.org or email cryoemfacility@janelia.hhmi.org.