Understanding the Causes of Disease

FEI Company announced that the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) has installed a multi-million dollar Titan Krios™ transmission electron microscope (TEM) from FEI. In an effort to understand the causes of disease, UCLA’s Dr Hong Zhou, Director of the newly established Electron Imaging Centre for NanoMachines (EICN), part of the California NanoSystems Institute, has initiated high-resolution molecular imaging studies using the new Titan Krios TEM.

The Titan Krios is specifically designed for 3D molecular imaging applications where samples are imaged at cryogenic temperatures, which preserves the biological samples in their native hydrated state. The microscope’s ability to generate images used in the creation of 3D molecular structures with resolutions as small as a few tenths of a nanometer allows scientists to investigate the structure and function of biological nanomachines at the molecular scale.

Matthew Harris, FEI’s Vice President and General Manager of the Life Sciences Division, said: “Dr Zhou and his colleagues recently achieved breakthrough results in 3D molecular reconstruction with resolution better than four Ångströms using an FEI Tecnai Polara™ TEM. We are confident that Dr Zhou will continue to push the boundaries of molecular imaging, and we look forward to supporting him with many groundbreaking discoveries using the Titan Krios.”

Dr Zhou added: “The advanced optics, automation and cryo capabilities of the Titan Krios are absolutely essential for our research in nanobiology and nanomedicine. Developments in these areas will expand opportunities to contribute to major advances in rational drug design and targeted delivery, and ultimately advance us towards biology-inspired nanomachines.”

Recent advances have made cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) an important imaging tool for major applications in both medicine and nanobiological research. Researchers can use cryo-EM to visualise a broad range of assemblies or nanometer-scale structures at near-atomic resolution and in three dimensions. This imaging method covers a scale range from tens of micrometers to Ångströms and provides valuable structural information for numerous scientific disciplines including structural biology, cell biology, medical and pharmaceutical science.