The cryo-EM laboratory at the University of Milano (CEMIL) is a coordinated research center at the University of Milano hosting biochemical and biophysical expertise, together with research intrumentation for structural biology through single particle cryo-EM, X-ray crystallography and in silico simulations. CEMIL offers services such as protein biochemical and biophysical characterization, sample preparation and cryo-EM analysis of protein 3D structure, crystallization screenings and structural analysis through X-ray crystallography to in-house and external scientists.
Platforms available for access through Instruct-ITALIA
- Electron Microscopy and Electron Tomography
- High-throughput crystallization
- X-ray macromolecular crystallography
Instrumentation
FEI Talos Arctica 200 kV FEG electron microscope equipped with a state-of-the-art FEI Falcon 3EC direct electron detector and Volta Phase-plate. The Cryo-EM Lab also benefits from a dedicated sample preparation room to ensure the highest specimen quality and a GPU-based computing cluster for efficient and hustle-free data analysis.
Techniques
Electron Microscopy and Electron Tomography
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High-throughput crystallization
The facility runs two Oryx robotic systems for the crystallization of proteins based on 100 – 1000 nL droplet samples. Routinely, crystallization screens are run at two temperatures, and followed in their development for about 8 weeks.
X-ray macromolecular crystallography
X-ray diffraction data are routinely collected at the European Synchrotron facilities (ESRF, DIAMOND, EMBL-Hamburg, ELETTRA, …). All phasing techniques are applied according to the specific challenges posed by any experiment. State of the art structure solution/refinement software is up and running and continuously updated from different international sources and packages.
