eBIC: The UK National Cryo-EM Facility

The electron Bio-Imaging Centre was established at Diamond Light Source following the award of a £15.6 million grant from the Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

eBIC mission:

• Provide 24/7 free user access through peer-review process
• Develop cutting-edge technology with in-house research program
• Grow and train cryo-EM user community
• Foster integrated structural biology within Diamond and beyond

eBIC is a CryoEM center providing scientists with state-of-the-art experimental equipment and expertise in the field of cryo-electron microscopy, for single particle analysis, electron tomography and electron diffraction. The location of eBIC enables scientists to combine their techniques with many of the other cutting-edge approaches that Diamond offers. 

Currently eBIC houses five Titan Krios microscopes, a Talos Arctica, two Glacios, a Scios and an Aquilos cryo-FIB/SEM, and a Leica CryoCLEM.

We now have two PDRA positions available in Professor Zhang’s lab at the eBIC in Diamond. The positions are funded by a 5-year ERC AdG grant award on “Molecular choreography of bacterial chemotaxis signalling”.

We are seeking highly motivated scientists to conduct high-resolution structural analysis of chemosensory arrays in distinct conformational states, in vitro and in vivo in native cells, as well as in time-resolved signalling states upon chemical stimulation, using cryoET and subtomogram averaging.

Chemotaxis - a ubiquitous biological behaviour enabling the movement of a cell or organism toward or away from chemicals - has severed as a paradigmatic model for the study of cellular sensory signal transduction and motile behaviour. This project is focused on understanding the underlying molecular mechanisms of chemosensory array assembly, activation by its stimulus and high cooperativity, by determining the precise interactions between the signalling components within in vitro reconstituted array systems and in native E. coli cells. We will use a combination of innovative and cutting-edge cryoEM/ET methods, including high-resolution cryoET subtomogram averaging, time-resolved conformational changes during signalling, and computational modelling of dynamics, as well as in vivo functional assays, to investigate the structural and dynamical mechanisms underlying signal transduction, propagation, and regulation in the chemosensory array.

Read more here...Postdoctoral Research Associate - Cryo EM/ET - Bacterial Chemotaxis