Latest eBIC news

Fantastic to see so many people attending our BCI meeting, held the day before the CCP-EM Spring Symposium. Many thanks to everyone for joining eBIC and B24 teams in Nottingham, from our user community, speakers, and sponsors. 

Introducing a new format this year, we held satellite meetings in the morning with informative workshops proving to be a great success. We have lots of ideas for expanding these sessions next year! Topics covered in this year’s workshops: 

• Best practices for high-resolution single-particle data collection as applied to drug-discovery projects. (Jason van Rooyen, eBIC for Industry) 

• Getting the most out of new sample preparation technologies: samples and access routes. (Miriam Weckener, SPT Labtech and David Owen, eBIC Diamond) 

• Does your project need corelative soft X-ray tomography? (Maria Harkiolaki, B24) 

James Gilchrist presented key updates from eBIC, including EPU multigrid and TomoLive on all Krios; updates on the user program and commissioning calls (single particle, molecular and lamella tomography, lamella prep, Chameleon, cryoCLEM and MircoED commissioning); the flexible access modes (eBIC for Industry); training and workshops; staff changes and In situ biology (lamella tomography) - focus on main challenges and future direction, fluorescent targeting and tissue work.  

We were thrilled to hear from our facility users Bertram Daum and Pranav Shah, presenting exciting new results made possible by access to eBIC within the last year. Read more here:  
Bertram Daum - Electron cryo-microscopy reveals the structure of the archaeal thread filament  
Pranav Shah - Visualising assembly intermediates of Rotavirus inside cells 

“Inspirational” was the feedback on our two female keynote speaker talks, kindly given by Elizabeth Wright, speaking on ‘Recent developments in correlative cryo-EM technologies to support in situ structural biology’, and Bridget Carragher talking about ‘Progress in cryoEM: Better, Faster, Cheaper, Smarter’.  

The round-table discussion wrapped up the day. As always this is a very helpful session for us to gauge user opinion and receive feedback, helping to ensure that the services and training we offer is consistent with the changing needs of our user base and the community. We are looking at your suggestions, thank you for sharing ideas with us, a few are below:  

• Include survey link as part of UAS ‘feedback’ process 6 months prior to the user meeting. 

• Provide an incentive for filling in the survey, such as a prize draw. 

• More tomography training, in particular on data collection and processing lamellar samples. 

The evening ceilidh was a great success too, proving great fun with team members and guests skipping across the dance floor! Here’s looking forward to next year! 

Grateful thanks to sponsors of our event: Quantum Detectors; SPT Labtech; Evotec; Dectris; ThermoFisher Scientific; Gatan.

During the past few months, we have been pleased to welcome new Post-Doctoral Research Associates to the team at the electron Bio-Imaging Centre (eBIC).

In August, Éilís Bragginton joined eBIC as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate using cryo-EM to investigate the structure of bacteriophage-like particles, and Keith Cassidy joined as an ERC grant funded Post-doctoral Research Associate using molecular simulations to investigate chemotaxis signaling in bacteria.

At the beginning of September, Debakshi Mullick joined as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate and works on a collaborative project with P&G to understand the mode of action of clinically relevant actives on microbes using CLEM and Cryo-EM techniques.

Followed by Olivia Oung, who started at the beginning of October. Olivia is a visiting Post-Doctoral Research Associate from Washington State University and will be working at eBIC for 9 months to study arrangements of cytochrome b6f and photosystem II in thylakoid membranes at different light conditions.

eBIC are delighted to have recently delivered the Cryo-EM DTP course for a second year, providing fundamental lectures and practical sessions in cryo-EM, from the electron microscope and sample preparation, through to image formation and processing, reconstruction in SPA and cryo-ET, and model building.

For the first time in a long while, we were able to welcome attendees to site for this 4 day course which was also run as a hybrid event to benefit a larger audience. Students from the Oxford Wellcome Trust Doctoral Training Program (WT DTP) attended all practicals, as well as lectures which were opened to a wider in-person and online audience from across the Harwell Campus and Oxford. Technology for broadcasting the practical sessions was successfully trialled and presents an exciting opportunity to open our practical sessions to a hybrid audience in the near future. eBIC want this course to benefit the wider community and will soon post course materials to the course website.

We would like to extend our gratitude and thanks to all our course lecturers for their time and excellent talks, Dimple Karia from Thermo Fisher Scientific, Colin Palmer and Agnel-Praveen Joseph from CCP-EM, Lindsay Baker and Pranav Shah from the University of Oxford, and eBIC Principal Electron Microscopists Dan Clare, Karen Davies, Yuriy Chaban, and eBIC's Senior Scientist Kyle Morris. Thank you also goes to our in-house instructors for delivering the very well received practical sesssions, Vinod Vogirala and Davide Zabeo (eBIC Electron Microscope Scientists) and Peter Harrison (joint PDRA with eBIC/MPL). Final thanks to the organisers in eBIC and Diamond Light Source Comms.

More information on this course is here and course materials will be posted to the course page very soon.

eBIC is inviting a limited number of users back on-site during June-August 2022. Onsite access will be prioritised based on technique used.  Order of priority is:

1. CryoCLEM                                     →  onsite
2. FIBSEM (Scios/Aquilos)               →  onsite
3. Lamellae tomography                →  apply
4. Cellular tomography                   →  apply
5. High-resolution tomography     →  remote
6. Single particles                            →  remote

For on-site access, users need to apply at least two weeks before session by emailing karen.davies@diamond.ac.uk with explanation as to why on-site access is essential for their visit.

We strongly recommend users continue to use the ISPyB system for Sample Shipping. Users who do not use ISPyB shipping are solely responsible for their sample arriving and leaving eBIC. Only dry shippers entered into ISPyB will be checked and topped up with liquid nitrogen. All samples must be entered into the UAS and have an approved ERA before they arrive on site. 

Krios III has been upgraded with a Selectris X imaging filter and Falcon 4i direct detector from ThermoFisher Scientific. The Selectris X offers reduced aberrations compared with the standard Selectris filter and allows for the use of a finer energy selecting slit, giving improved contrast for tomography data. The upgrade from Falcon 4 to 4i will improve throughput for all data collections.

Additionally Krios I-IV have all been upgraded to Windows 10, allowing eBIC to take advantage of the latest new features and software developments as they become available.

The CCP-EM Spring Symposium conference aims to provide a forum to highlight state of the art developments in computational cryo-EM and related themes as well as showcasing outstanding recent biological applications.

The first day includes the biological cryo-imaging user meeting for eBIC & B24 and is organised by the Diamond Light Source. PDF for the user meeting schedule available here.

Further details about the CCP-EM Spring Symposium 2022.