Electron Microscopes

Our laboratory also serves as an EM core facility in the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.

We have a FEI Tecnai T12 fitted with state of the art Gatan real time and slow scan cameras. A new Gatan Rio -16, 4kx4k camera with drift correction has just been installed.

In 2010 we were awarded an NIH grant for $300,000 to upgrade our cryoEM equipment and this allowed us to obtain a FEI Vitrobot, a robotic freezing instrument for cryoEM. We have three high vacuum systems including one for freeze-drying molecules and cells.

Several years ago, this investigator spearheaded an effort to bring full cryoEM to the Research Triangle Area. This effort was successful and UNC now has a dedicated FEI Talos Arctica 200 kV cryoEM instrument with a Gatan K3 single electron detector camera.

The facility is operated as a university-wide core facility with a full-time facility director. Two other cryoEM instruments are now in place nearby, with a Krios at Duke and another Arctica at the NIEHS.

Our laboratory is currently funded by two RO1 level grants, one from the NIEHS for work on telomeres and DNA damage and another from the NCI to study Herpesviruses.