Abstract
The choice of equipment for an electron crystallography laboratory will ultimately be determined by the available budget; nevertheless, the ideal lab will have two electron microscopes: a dedicated 300 kV cryo-EM with a field emission gun and a smaller LaB6 machine for screening. The high-end machine should be equipped with photographic film or a very large CCD or CMOS camera for 2D crystal data collection; the screening microscope needs a mid-size CCD for rapid evaluation of crystal samples. The microscope room installations should provide adequate space and a special environment that puts no restrictions on the collection of high-resolution data. Equipment for specimen preparation includes a carbon coater, glow discharge unit, light microscope, plunge freezer, and liquid nitrogen containers and storage dewars. When photographic film is to be used, additional requirements are a film desiccator, dark room, optical diffractometer, and a film scanner. Having the electron microscopes and ancillary equipment well maintained and always in optimum condition facilitates the production of high-quality data.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Werner Kühlbrandt and all past and present members of the Department of Structural Biology for their support and contributions to the EM facility.
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Mills, D.J., Vonck, J. (2013). Choice and Maintenance of Equipment for Electron Crystallography. In: Schmidt-Krey, I., Cheng, Y. (eds) Electron Crystallography of Soluble and Membrane Proteins. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 955. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-62703-176-9_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-62703-176-9_19
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