Cryo-EM at the University of Utah

By Peter Shen

 Department of Biochemistry, University of Utah

In recent years, the University of Utah has established an outstanding core base of cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) expertise and compiled a strong track record of performing impactful cryo-EM research. These efforts have resulted in the University of Utah being awarded one of five $2.5 million grants from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation to establish a world-class cryo-EM facility.

Most of the cryo-EM data analysis procedures at the University of Utah are performed using CHPC resources. CHPC supports many software packages used in cryo-EM data processing, including RELION, EMAN2, SPIDER, FREALIGN, BSoft, and cryoSPARC.

One major focus in the field [of cryo-electron microscopy] is to fully automate the entire pipeline of recording cryo-EM movies, de-blurring the images, identifying the particles, and reconstructing them in 3D. Perhaps the time is not far off when high-quality 3D reconstructions will be attainable within hours after the cry-EM imaging session. Our ongoing collaborations with CHPC will certainly play an important role for this dream to become a reality here at the University of Utah.

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