Cryo-Electron Tomography: A Journey from Sample Preparation to Data Mining providing a holistic overview of this rapidly advancing field and equipping researchers with the knowledge and tools necessary to initiate their own investigations. The book begins with a section on advanced cryogenic sample preparation for in situ cellular tomography, covering a range of sample types including viruses, bacteria, eukaryotic cells, and perspectives for organoids and tissues. Specific chapters focus on essential approaches such as vitrification, sample thinning, and bimodal correlative techniques. The book then transitions to a section on data mining and validation.
Prof. Dorit Hanein received her doctoral degree from the Weizmann Institute in Israel. She completed her training as a Fulbright postdoctoral fellow at Brandeis University under the mentorship of Professor David DeRosier, a pioneer in three-dimensional image reconstruction techniques via electron microscopy. Prof. Hanein is affiliated with the University of California, Santa Barbara, and serves as a PEW Innovation Fund Investigator. She holds a “Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches” (HDR, Accreditation to Direct Research) from Sorbonne University, France.
Prof. Hanein’s research lies at the intersection of structural biology, cell biology, systems biology, and engineering science. Her work focuses on the quantitative integration of high-resolution imaging technologies, designed to visualize the molecular architecture and dynamic conformational landscape of biological nanomachines in three dimensions within their native environments and under mechanical perturbations. She has made seminal contributions to our understanding of the cytoskeleton and macromolecular assemblies, advanced the field of quantitative electron microscopy, pioneered the use of correlative light and cryo-electron microscopic tomography and functionalized substrates. The strategic employment of these techniques has revolutionized our ability to define the building blocks of large dynamic macromolecular complexes in three dimensions with high fidelity and high resolution, while contextualizing their function within whole cells.
Professor Niels Volkmann received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Hamburg, Germany, conducting his doctoral research at the Max Planck Institute under the mentorship of Ada Yonath, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009. Following his doctoral studies, Dr. Volkmann trained as a postdoctoral fellow at Brandeis University with David DeRosier, a pioneer in three-dimensional image reconstruction techniques. He is currently a Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Professor Volkmann’s research group focuses on advancing computational, artificial intelligence, and data science approaches to bridge the gap between atomic and cellular scales, spanning over six orders of magnitude from Ångstroms to tens of microns. His lab has introduced groundbreaking algorithms in cryogenic electron microscopy and tomography, including automated correlation-based docking and the watershed transform, significantly enhancing structural analysis and interpretation.
