A2O - Transforming EMPIAR into an Essential Resource for EM Data Spanning Scales from Atoms to Organisms

Recent advances in electron microscopy (EM) have made it a key technique for studying the three-dimensional structures of important biological molecules and even cells. This has helped to improve our understanding of biological functions and processes. If the experimental EM data are made publicly available then specialists can use it to improve current methods and to develop new ones for data processing and for checking the accuracy or validity of the results and conclusions. The Electron Microscopy Public Image Archive (EMPIAR) was developed in collaboration with the EM community for this very purpose. In this proposal we aim to improve EMPIAR and also make it possible to store EM data related to much larger biological specimens. By doing this, EMPIAR will become a rich and freely available resource of EM data on scales from atoms and molecules, via cells and tissues to entire organisms.