Fitzpatrick Lab awarded CZI Visual Proteomics Grant

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) announced nearly $28 million in grants to support technology developments that will allow researchers to see the inner workings of cells at near-atomic resolution through next-generation electron microscopy. The Frontiers of Imaging initiative, part of CZI’s broader Imaging program, supports the development of disruptive imaging technologies that connect biological scales across organs, cells, and proteins, allowing researchers to directly visualize biological processes at the necessary resolution and context to obtain a mechanistic understanding of health and disease.

The Fitzpatrick lab will develop a pulsed ponderomotive phase plate that allows in-focus phase contrast of cryo-EM specimens. By focusing a pulsed laser to intersect the post-specimen electron beam, the ponderomotive potential of the focused laser crossover produces a scattering-angle-dependent phase shift in the electrons, resulting in a highly tunable contrast transfer function, with significantly enhanced contrast of the cells under inspection. This powerful approach to boosting contrast in cellular cryo-electron tomograms has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of biology by mapping cell atlases in unprecedented detail.