Automated Data Collection for Cryo Electron Microscopy

Clint Potter

Director

Imaging Technology Group

Beckman Institute

17 June 1999

Molecular microscopy is one of the most important structural approaches in cell biological investigations and can provide insight into complex biological questions that no other technique can provide. Currently, the technique typically requires the acquisition of very large numbers of transmission electron micrographs from frozen hydrated specimens using low dose techniques. The field is constrained by manual data acquisition methods that are slow, laborintensive and result in a very low percentage of suitable images. We have developed a system, called Leginon, for automatically acquiring images from a transmission electron microscope [1,2]. Our first prototype of this system demonstrated that we could acquire 1000 high magnification images per day from negatively stained catalase crystals. We have now extended this system to acquire low dose images of specimens embedded in vitreous ice. This talk will give an overview of the system and recent results.