Study cells to understand underlying mechanisms of life

Shed light on the connections between different intercellular membrane systems by membrane contact sites in a streamlined cryo-electron tomography workflow, empowered by the integrated cryo-correlative light and electron microscopy (cryo-CLEM) solutions

What we can help you to achieve

Identify the region of interest with effortless switching between microscopes
Look into cells at the nanometer scale without sample damage and complex transfer
Understand how the cell operates in vivo in its near-native environment
Keep cellular samples vitrified and ice contamination-free at ease

Cell Biology_Cryo_Media with Description

Visualize cells in 3D structure with in-situ cryo-CLEM

Studying the morphology of organelles, vesicles and tubules using Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) laid the foundation of our current understanding of the organization of the cell. However, as it’s very difficult to extract 3D information with TEM, electron tomography has been instrumental for the study of several biological aspects of the cell that were overlooked with TEM. Taking one step further, cryogenic electron tomography (cryo-ET) gives us opportunities to image at low temperatures, which preserves the morphology of the membrane compartments and protein complexes in the cell.

Achieving a high-resolution 3D model of a protein complex in its native state using in situ cryo-ET is a complicated procedure. The quality of the tomogram and the number of particles play a large role in obtaining a high-resolution structure. So having a higher quantity of good quality lamellae is desirable. The in-situ cryo-CLEM solutions we offer at Delmic greatly increase the chance of localizing proteins of interest for lamellae milling and reduce contamination by reducing handling steps. This will lead to easier and better tomogram acquisition, and ultimately to higher resolution structure resolving using subtomogram averaging.

What can you achieve with integrated cryo-CLEM?

Our integrated cryo-CLEM system, METEOR, is the world-first commercially available fluorescent light microscope (FLM) that can be integrated into a cryo-focused ion beam/scanning electron microscope, which directly cuts down the steps in the current cryo-ET workflow and thus increases workflow and cost efficiencies. With fewer transfer steps, not only are time and effort saved with the integration, but your precious cellular samples also are much less exposed to the risks of sample damage.

Achieve high resolution structure resolving using subtomogram averaging
Advance membrane trafficking research with an optimized cryo-ET workflow
Protect your samples from ice contamination at every step of the cryo-EM workflow

METEOR (fluorescent light microscope) image of a 1.5 μm thick lamella of Hela cells. Images courtesy of A. Bieber, C. Capitanio and O. Schioetz (MPI Biochemistry)

20200616_1_Cryo Blogpost Epithelial Cell-01

With these powerful tools, we were able to streamline the cryo-FIB/SEM automation process. Since there is no contamination visible, we were able to polish our lamellae automatically to a thickness of less than 150 nm on average, which was hitherto not possible with contamination...

Dr. Sebastian Tacke

Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology

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Use the right products to get the right results

Delmic user-friendly and reliable cryo systems will help you to dramatically increase sample yield, obtain high quality, powerful data much faster and allow you to understand cellular activities and the structure of protein complexes better.

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