Technical Advances and Recent Breakthroughs in 3DEM

The GRC on 3-D Electron microscopy has recently doubled it’s meeting frequency from being held every two years in the US to an annual event alternating between the US and Europe. Despite this increase in meeting capacity the recent conferences were still oversubscribed and hopeful applicants had to be deterred. This development clearly demonstrates the strong interest in 3DEM methods and applications for biological specimens, and that the conference serves a growing community. In particular, since the rediscovery of (cryo-) electron tomography for large cellular structures the demand for 3DEM has literally exploded despite a current limitation in resolution to approx. 2nm due to technical limitations. On the other end, recent work has shown that electron microscopy data of biological structures may reach atomic resolution beyond 0.2nm. In-between these two extremes hybrid methods, combining intermediate resolution EM 3D maps with X-ray, NMR or even in-silico data have been improved tremendously and generated a lot of excitement for thorough investigations into protein structure and function relationships. Obviously these developments are as usual accompanied and made possible by new products from the relevant industries ranging for microscope technology (LHe-lenses, corrector lenses, energy filtering, phase-plates improved stages) to detector design (lens-coupled CCD systems, CMOS detectors etc.). At the same time data acquisition and image analysis software products are constantly improved and refined, playing their crucial role on the data handling and interpretation front.

The GRC conference on 3DEM has always been one of the most exciting meetings in the field and it brought together the leaders in electron microscopy with the next generation microscopists as well as industrial partners. The format allows for ample discussion and exchange between the official presentations, which is an extremely successful concept that has nothing lost of its attraction. As on previous conferences the program will include formal presentations and poster presentations. Due to limited attendance (max. 150 participants) early registration is recommended.