State of the art direct electron detection at the Astbury Biostructure Laboratory

Structural Biology aims to understand life in molecular detail, and is a major focus in biomedical discovery. Cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM) is a key tool in structural biology, and we run a major cryoEM facility at the University of Leeds (UoL). We currently run at full capacity, supporting a wide range of scientists from Leeds, across the UK and beyond. To enhance our capacity to support this biomedical discovery science, we are requesting £1m in funding from Wellcome, together with £1.125m of cash and in-kind contributions from UoL, to upgrade the cameras and controls systems on our microscopes. These upgrades will mean that ~5x as many images can be recorded, and crucially, each will be of higher quality. In turn this will allow more users to collect more data, reducing the time and cost to solve 3D structures that are important in areas such as immunology, cancer biology, degeneration and virology.