Electron Microscopy

Electron microscopy in Life Sciences can be grouped into several categories:

  1. Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) can be used with room temperature samples to perform first low-resolution studies of the samples.

  2. Cryo-Electron Microscopy (Cryo-EM) can be used with frozen samples to obtain atomic resolution structures of proteins.

  3. Cryo-Electron Tomography (Cryo-ET) provides 3D volume analysis of sections of cells or organelles or bacteria, and cryo-ET can also be used on isolated particles.

  4. Correlative Light and Electron Microscopy (CLEM) is a method that combines the analytic possibilities of fluorescense light microscopy with the high-resolution structural analysis of the electron microscope.

 

There are several excellent online courses about cryo-EM available.

  1. We recommend subscribing to the 3DEM email list. It has an impressive archive of earlier emails.
  2. The CCPEM email list is about single particle cryo-EM. It is also worth subscribing to.
  3. Grant Jensen's online class „Getting started in cryo-EM".  This 14-hour online class covers the fundamental principles underlying cryo-electron microscopy starting with the basic anatomy of electron microscopes, an introduction to Fourier transforms, and the principles of image formation. Building upon that foundation, the class then covers the sample preparation issues, data collection strategies, and basic image processing workflows for all 3 basic modalities of modern cryo-EM: tomography, single particle analysis, and 2-D crystallography.
  4. Lecture series on EM given at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology - LMB
  5. Lecture series by the SBGrid consortium
  6. Lectures on various structural biology software including cryo-EM packages hosted by SBGrid consortium
  7. Lectures from workshops organized by the National Resource for Automated Molecular Microscopy (NRAMM)
  8. Eva Nogales' iBioSeminar on cryo-EM