Feasibility Assessment

Cryo-EM has become a powerful structural biology tool in pharmaceutical research and development by allowing us to visualize complex structures at high resolution.

NanoImaging Services offers a feasibility assessment package, also known as a Starter Pack, which is the entry point for most new projects. This feasibility assessment is a valuable service that can help your team quickly gain a better understanding of your sample and its characteristics.  Submitting high-quality, structure-grade samples is crucial for maximizing the changes of obtaining a 3D high-resolution structure.

Our Starter Pack provides a comprehensive characterization of your sample's suitability for progression to high-resolution data collection. It allows our team to understand your sample’s behavior and predict how much time and effort will be required to obtain a high resolution 3D reconstruction.

The starter pack is carried out on one of our four Thermo Fisher Scientific Glacios microscopes in our San Diego or Woburn facilities. Once your sample arrives, we will perform a quick negative stain screening to assess sample quality. The data obtained lets us know whether your sample has arrived intact, whether there’s gross aggregation, heterogeneity, and at times helps us determine complex formation.

After the negative stain screening, we assess how well your sample behaves during the vitrification process. At this time, we prepare up to 11 grids, testing many different conditions to identify what works best for your sample. Our microscopists choose a representative grid to undergo overnight data collection where we take over 2,000 micrographs. After this collection, we will calculate 2D class averages, and an initial map if the data warrants it and client requests it. Our expert scientists evaluate the data and may recommend further grid preparation and screening, or additional data collection time if necessary.  Within a week, our Starter Pack provides valuable insights as to whether your target is suitable to progress to medium (6 Å) or high-resolution (3.5 Å or higher) data collection. Our team will work with you to make informed decisions about the next steps of your project.