UB-HWI offers a range of Structural Services to academic and industrial partners including single-particle cryo-EM, microcrystal-electron diffraction, and crystallization screening. Our philosophy is to provide industry level capabilities at the highest standards for quality, reliability, efficiency, and productivity while providing confidentiality and expert support for challenging experiments. We want you to be successful and to enable that by providing cost-effective access to world-class research capabilities to maintain competitiveness.
UB-HWI has a dedicated Cryo-Electron Microscopy (Cryo-EM) Center consisting of dedicated microscope facilities with precise environmental control that minimizes temperature drift or fluctuation, electromagnetic interference, mechanical vibrations, and acoustic noises. An energy storage system provides low noise electrical power and several hours of backup for the cryo-EM facility and most of the Institute. The facility has a dedicated control room of the microscopic systems, a sample preparation laboratory with a low humidity room, and a visitors’ lounge for collaborators. Remote data viewing is available and the facility is rounded out by dedicated computational and storage servers. The facility has a 200 kV Glacios Cryo transmission electron microscope with Falcon 4 and Ceta-D detectors and is equipped to perform both single-particle and microcrystal electron diffraction studies. The Center is configured with facilities able to support up to three microscopes including a 300 kV system.
The Cryo-EM Center works with academic and commercial users providing Cryo-EM services including sample preparation, characterization, data collection, and analysis for high-resolution structural studies.
The National Crystallization Center was awarded an NIH NIGMS R24 grant to become a National Resource for crystallography in 2021. As the National Crystallization Center, we support academic, government, and non-profit research institutes, providing unique protein crystallization services for structural biology. Since it began operations in February 2000, the Crystallization Center has set up over 25 million crystallization experiments on more than 18,000 biological macromolecules for almost 2,000 laboratories worldwide. Macromolecular crystallization services at UB-HWI enable experiments that are monitored with state-of-the-art imaging techniques, empowering the detection of crystals that other techniques miss.