Instruments & Equipment

Overview:

The Glacios 2 cryo-TEM is optimized for high-throughput screening, single-particle data collection, and cryo-electron tomography (cryoET) of cryogenic samples.

Features:

• Falcon 4i direct electron detector
• Ceta 16M CMOS camera
• SmartEPU with Quality Monitor, Multigrid, and
• Tomography 5
• 12-sample Autoloader
• Aberration-free image shift (AFIS)
• Fringe-free imaging (FFI)

Imaging Parameters:

• Accelerating voltage: 200kV
• Spherical aberration (Cs): 2.7mm

Normal Magnification	Pixel Size (Å/pix)	Benchmark Resolution (Å)+
73,000x	1.92
92,000x	1.53
120,000x	1.166**	2.64
150,000x	0.94
190,000x	0.7159**	2.10

* 190,000 x magnification maximizes the field of view relative to the area exposed with the electron beam, covering the greatest area on the sample grid in the shortest time possible.

** Pixel sizes calibrated by comparison of a benchmark apoferritin reconstruction to a high-resolution x-ray crystal structure. Other pixel sizes are measured using a standard cross-grating replica grid.

+ Single-particle reconstruction of equine spleen apoferritin (Sigma Aldritch).

Overview:

The Talos F200C is suited for room-temperature imaging of negatively stained samples; screening, single-particle data collection, or cryo-electron tomography (cryoET) of cryogenic samples; and microcrystal electron diffraction (microED).

Features:

• Apollo direct electron detector
• Ceta-F CEMOS camera
• EPU
• Tomography 5
• SerialEM

Imaging parameters:

• Accelerating voltage: 200kV
• Spherical aberration (Cs): 2.7mm

Normal Magnification	Ceta-F pixel size (Å/pix)*	Apollo pixel size (Å/pix)*
13,500		2.284
17,500		1.808
22,000	6.7	1.415
28,000	5.2	1.116
36,000	4.1	0.8932
45,000	3.3	0.7038
57,000	2.6	0.5594
73,000	2.0	0.4394
92,000	1.6	0.349
120,000	1.3
150,000	0.99
190,000	0.77

* Pixel sizes are physical resolution (4k x 4k) for the Ceta-F and super-resolution (8k x 8k) for the Apollo by default.

Overview:

The Vitrobot automates the process of blotting and plunge-freezing samples for cryo-TEM imaging to improve consistency and reproducibility. Typical specimens include proteins, viruses, vesicles, bacteria, and cells.

Features:

• Humidity and temperature control
• Double-sided blotting

Gatan Cryoplunge

Features:

• Single- or double-sided blotting

Features:

• 20 customizable template recipes
• Inlets for three process gases
• Water vapor attachment for steady supply of hydrophilic functional groups
• Remote plasma generation for gentler cleaning/modification of TEM grids

Features:

• Customizable glow discharging process
• Single-button operation

Gatan Model 626

Features:

• ~4hr liquid nitrogen holding time
• ≥3.4Å resolution

Gatan “Elsa” Model 698

Features:

• Ultra-low profile for high tilt angles
• ~8hr liquid nitrogen holding time
• ≥2.3Å resolution

Simple Origin Model 201

Features:

• Dual grid holder: one standard TEM grid and one Autogrid
• ~810hr liquid nitrogen holding time
• ≥2.4Å resolution

GPU server (Jupiter)

Overview:

Jupiter is a multi-GPU computing server acting as the main cryoSPARC worker node used for on-the-fly data processing, which matches the pace of data collection on the Glacios 2.

Features:

• 4 x NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB GPUs
• 32-core 64-thread AMD EPYC 7543P Milan CPU
• 256 GB SuperMicro DDR4 RAM

GPU workstation (Saturn)

Overview:

Saturn utilizes a single cutting-edge GPU for tilt-series processing and tomographic reconstructions as well as single-particle data processing.

Features:

• NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Max-Q Workstation Edition 96GB GPU
• 32-core 64-thread AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9975WX CPU
• 256 GB Kingston DDR5-6400 MHz ECC Reg. RAM