PHOTO : JEOL Ltd.[Sports DB = Reporter Ko Dong-ho] JEOL Ltd. (TOKYO:6951) (President & COO Izumi Oi) announces the release of a new cold field emission cryo-electron microscope (cryo-EM), the CRYO ARM™ 300 II (JEM-3300), to be released in January 2021. This new cryo-EM has been developed based on the concept of “Quick and easy to operate and get high-contrast and high-resolution images”.Development Background

Recent dramatic improvement of resolution in single particle analysis (SPA) using cryo-EM has led to SPA as an essential method for structural analysis of proteins. To address this market, JEOL released the CRYO ARM™ 300 in 2017. Equipped with a cold field emission gun (Cold FEG) for enhanced resolution and a cryo-stage for loading multiple samples, the CRYO ARM™ 300 has continued to achieve best-in-class resolution for SPA.

However, the previous workflow of SPA using cryo-EM needs multiple electron microscopes because the workflows for sample screening and for image data acquisition are independent of one another. This problem gives rise to large operating costs for cryo-EM users. Since multiple microscopes must be used, it is inconvenient to transfer cryo-samples between the cryo-EMs. Therefore, users have been requesting one cryo-EM enabling the complete workflow from sample screening to image data acquisition. Furthermore, in order for various users to use the cryo-EM, an improvement of usability has been required, allowing anyone from novice users to professional users to smoothly operate the microscope.

To meet these requests, JEOL has developed a new cryo-EM, the CRYO ARM™ 300 II. This microscope achieves a great improvement in throughput for high-quality data acquisition with quick and easy operation compared with the previous CRYO ARM™ 300.