Any academic or industrial researchers and scientists, who wants to use the ADVANCED CENTER FOR CRYO-ELECTRON MICROSCOPY FACILITY at IISc for their high-resolution data collection should directly contact the EM manager (cryoem.iisc@gmail.com) or (somnath@iisc.ac.in). A nominal charge will be applicable for cryo-EM grid preparation & microscope for all the users. All the users should provide sample details and preliminary sample purification or biochemical data to get the access to the microscope. The data will be evaluated by expert users or professors. If any users are not willing to provide the sample details or any biochemical data, there will be no assurance about the grid quality and data quality. However, as a facility incharge, I strongly encourage all the users to provide the preliminary sample purification or biochemical data to utilize the microscope timing properly.
Most of the cryo-EM apparatuses and accessories are very expansive. Therefore, no request will be entertained about the cryo-freezing or cartridge preparation or cassette transfer by external or internal users. Only expert users (mainly PIs) are encouraged to prepare sample for their students/post docs or completely handover the sample to EM manager for freezing and cartridge preparation. Those who have proper training to handle the data acquisition (Latitude S Software) will only be allowed to operate the microscope and setup data acquisition. Students or PIs are encouraged to stay with EM manager or Incharge at the time of data acquisition. The data (either movie files or integrated images or both) will be transferred to the hard drive and all users should bring their own hard drive. No hard drive will be provided from facility. Data transfer and drift correction will take at least 2-3 days. Hence, it is requested to all the users to keep patience and seek your own shipping arrangement to transfer the hard drive. You may also come to collect the drive with the collected data yourself if shipping arrangement is not pursued properly. At this moment we are unable to provide the full support for data processing but if any assistance is necessary, we are happy to assist the users.
Users publishing work containing data collected at our Cryo-EM Facility should ensure that they acknowledge the relevant facility personnel. In addition, the funding agencies should be acknowledged through the following statement: “The data was collected at the ADVANCED CENTER FOR CRYO-ELECTRON MICROSCOPY FACILITY FOR BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES AT IISc, Bengaluru, India funded by Department of Biotechnology (DBT) Infrastructure Grant, Govt of India and DST-FIST.” This should be strictly followed if someone uses the facility to screen their samples at IISc but wants to collect their data somewhere else.
Please notify us of the title, authors, journal, EMDB and PDB ID of any accepted publication through the facility via email (somnath@iisc.ac.in)