JEOL CRYO ARM 200 Microscope with Direct Electron Apollo detector

Abstract Funds are requested toward the purchase of a JEOL CRYO ARM 200 microscope with Direct Electron Apollo detector. The University of Utah and regional partners Brigham Young University and Utah State University have a large, vibrant, and well-funded community of structural biologists with well-established and emerging research programs that depend upon cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM). This community includes 13 Major Users and 11 Minor Users, supported by 35 NIH awards, who would use the new instrument. Multiple additional user grants will also directly depend upon access to the new instrument, including from NSF and private foundations. Our community already makes extensive use of the University of Utah Core Facility in Electron Microscopy, which is supported by a faculty-level Director and a faculty-level Director of Cryo-EM, both of whom have extensive experience in the instrumentation, methods, and applications of cryo-EM. The EM core facility currently houses just one instrument that is suitable for single-particle high-resolution cryo-EM, a ThermoFisher Scientific Titan Krios with a Gatan K3 detector. This instrument is state-of-the-art but is fully utilized and is experiencing a dramatic reduction in availability for single particle cryo-EM owing to commitments to the agency (Beckman Foundation) that funded purchase of both the Krios and a recently installed ThermoFisher Aquilos 2 Cryo-FIB. Specifically, the Beckman funding required that 50% of the Krios time be available to support cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) of samples generated using the Aquilos. This is appropriate because the Krios is especially well suited for cryo-ET. Compounding the need for enhanced single particle cryo-EM data collection, our aging ThermoFisher Tecai F20 instrument, which in principle could be used for screening, has become outdated, problematic to maintain, and will be retired. Furthermore, our user community is burgeoning with multiple recent junior recruits, recently recruited and highly active senior faculty members, and with multiple additional faculty recruitments envisioned. To address these needs, we propose to purchase a JEOL CRYO ARM 200 microscope with Direct Electron Apollo detector that will be housed in the EM core facility. This is an optimal solution because the instrument combines highly efficient screening with high-resolution data collection, is highly cost effective, can be used essentially 24/7, and will be housed, maintained, and managed in an outstanding existing core facility.