Title:

From Millimetres to Molecules: Microscopy Across Scales with Electron, Photon, and Ion Beams

Abstract:

Electron microscopy (EM) is the key technology to image tissues, cells, organelles, and biomolecules at the highest resolution. Providing a larger scale context is however, hampered by throughput limitations, while identification and targeting of a region of interest can be difficult due to a lack of molecular specificity. We have integrated light microscopy in scanning EMs to lift barriers in microscopy and develop new methods that utilise the coincidence of electrons, photons, and ions on the sample.

I will show how we use coincident electron, photon, and ion beam microscopy to accurately target and control the fabrication of thin vitrified lamellae for cryogenic electron tomography, including evaluation of lamella thickness and presence of ice crystals. Further, I will show how we use the integrated light microscope to detect transmission signals in SEM allowing discrimination of individual beamlet signals in a novel multi-beam SEM. Together, these approaches pave the way to zooming in and out on biology from millimetres down to sub-molecular length scales.

Jacob Hoogenboom is an associate professor at Delft University of Technology.

Research interests:

Integrated microscopy, SEM fluorescence CLEM, Ultrafast microscopy, Molecular nanophotonics