Support for European Access to Life Sciences (SEALS)

Titan Krios microscopes at Diamond's electron Bio-imaging Centre (eBIC)

The goal of this workshop is to teach users the best practices in sample preparation for cryo-EM imaging. The workshop will include lectures but otherwise be mainly hands-on, with students preparing vitrified samples on plunge-freezing devices. There will be a demonstration of the Chameleon (automatic sample preparation system), and of clipping and loading for Thermo Fisher Scientific autoloaders. Students will screen the samples they freeze on an eBIC Titan Krios microscope.

This workshop will be geared toward researchers relatively new to the field of cryo-EM, but who already have some prior experience of plunge freezing. Funding for accommodation and subsistence will be covered by iNEXT and Diamond Light Source, but travel costs have to be covered by participants. Industrial applicants will be able to access the course on a chargeable basis.

Applicants must show they are using cryo-EM as part of their research and have access to a plunge-freezing device. The workshop aims to equip participants with the necessary skillset to further develop their cryo-EM expertise at their home institutes and eBIC. Several biological test samples will be provided allowing participants hands-on experience with a variety of samples.

For more details, see: iNext Sample Preparation Workshop - - Diamond Light Source

Charlotte Edwards-Gayle and Nathan Cowieson at Diamond's bioSAXS beamline, B21, which is available for mail-in sample processing

European-based research groups can apply for support (travel, subsistence and dewar shipment) from the Horizon 2020 iNEXT Discovery partnership as well as Instruct-ERIC to access Diamond’s macromolecular crystallography beamlines, B21's bioSAXS mail-in service, cryo soft X-ray tomography and cryo super resolution fluorescence microscopy at B24, and cryo-electron microscopy at the Electron Bio-Imaging Centre (eBIC).

Please note that we ask all users including those who already have approved proposals with Diamond to apply to one of these schemes to enable us to provide financial support for your experiments.

These pages provide full details on the access routes and instruments available, how to apply, and details of the review process. You can navigate through these topics using the ‘In This Section’ panel on the top left-hand side of this page.