About the Facility

Established in 2004 with a High End Instrumentation grant from the National Center for Research Resources at the National Institutes of Health, the Facility is being developed to assist the Stanford biomedical research community in the study of a broad range of problems concerning cell function and disease that require imaging at nanometer spatial resolution.

The facility is centered on an FEI Tecnai TF 30 He (Polara) transmission electron microscope. This state-of-the-art instrument achieves 0.18 nm spatial resolution on test specimens. It is equipped with a field emission gun (FEG), liquid nitrogen and helium cooled multi-specimen holder, single and dual axis tilt specimen holders, a Tietz 224HD 2K x 2K CCD Camera, and software for automatic electron microscope tomography and single particle analysis data collection.

The facility also provides:

• Equipment for the preparation of certain specimens
• Two conventional electron microscopes for assessing sample quality for tomography
• Technical assistance with data collection
• Training and assistance in the use of EM3D, a unified application designed specifically for structural cell biologists that allows a user to proceed from a tomography data set of a specimen to a collection of 3D surface models of structures within the specimen
• Consultation for experimental design and data analysis

Potential users of the Polara need to register and submit a one-paragraph project outline to the Director for feasibility evaluation.

All users must be trained in how to operate the microscopes or use technical assistance provided by the Facility. Scheduling of the Polara is done on line. Scheduling of other equipment and devices is ad hoc.

The Facility is operated by the U.J. McMahan Laboratory.

 

Location

The Facility is located in the Sherman Fairchild Science Building at the School of Medicine, 299 Campus Drive West, Stanford, CA 94305-5125.

• Driving Directions

Top of Page