“The ERA Chair for the project Hot4Cryo talks to us about a cutting-edge technology
that is now coming to Greece”.
From: Nikos Stamatinis
Published on reader.gr
Cry-electron microscopy is an advanced technology that allows scientists to observe samples at extremely low temperatures with high precision. During this process, samples are cooled to very low temperatures to preserve their structure.
However, since the writer’s knowledge on the subject stops somewhere around the third line of the Wikipedia entry, they spoke with Dr. Panagiotis Kastritis, an Assistant Professor of Cryo-Electron Microscopy of Membrane Protein Complexes at the Institute of Biochemistry and Biotechnology at Martin Luther University in Germany, as well as a Research Associate at the Institute of Chemical Biology at the National Research Foundation.
Since March 2023, he has been the head of the European Hot4Cryo program, with a budget of 2.5 million euros, which aims to bring this technology to Greece for the first time and to the wider Southeastern Europe. To be more precise, its goal is to transfer knowledge on the use of this technology to our country.
This particular funding is highly competitive and is exclusively awarded to internationally renowned scientists to transfer technologies to the “developing” countries of the European Union, including Greece at the moment, due to the long-term crisis. But let’s start from the beginning.
What is cryo-electron microscopy?
“This particular technology allows us to capture images of immense resolution, meaning thanks to it, you can see not only cells and their structures, but even atoms.”
This was essentially one of the first things Dr. Kastritis told me, trying to explain to me what this previously unknown technology, to me, to which he has dedicated a significant portion of his life, is all about.
However, how long has this technology been around? “Electron microscopy technology is a very old method. It was born in Germany in the 1930s. Essentially, thanks to this technology, we know what we know about cells and their structure. Just think about the images of cells we had in biology textbooks,” he explains.
Alright, up to this point. But what’s the difference between cryo-electron microscopy and regular electron microscopy? “Cryo-electron microscopy is a more modern method. In this technique, you freeze your sample to preserve its structure. Electrons have very high energies and can destroy the sample. So, if you freeze it, the damage is much less. Simply put, because then the electrons interact with a solid rather than a liquid. Essentially, you protect it.”
The result is that this revolutionary technological method offers us a much more precise imaging of our samples. To give you an idea of the impact across various fields, this particular technology was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2017.
Before we continue with the rest, let’s mention that Panagiotis Kastritis studied and received his bachelor’s degree from the Department of Biology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He went abroad to conduct some measurements, and eventually, reality kept him there, even if it wasn’t part of his plans. Now, he directs his laboratories both in Germany and at the National Hellenic Research Foundation.
He focuses on studying how molecules interact within the cells of organisms, as these interactions determine the cell’s function. I asked him if he could do what he does today if he had stayed in Greece.
“What we do abroad, at least we, couldn’t do it in Greece. If that happened, it would only be through collaborations. However, this way also concerns me living abroad, and I wouldn’t be able to do anything of what I do alone,” he tells me something very interesting here, which we tend to forget, thinking that science operates in terms of other times.
“Research is no longer about a researcher sitting in the lab and working 24/7, waiting to have the perfect results and make a significant discovery out of the blue to get a Nobel Prize. Nowadays, research is an incredibly collaborative process. You need to be communicative, talk to people, so that all these ideas get feedback, and find people who will work with you.”
And what about Hot4Cryo?
Let’s go back to cryo-electron microscopy and its relationship with Greece. To advance this process, very expensive instruments are needed, which are installed in specially designed spaces. As you can understand from the context, these instruments do not exist neither in Greece nor in the wider region of southeastern Europe. This is where Mr. Kastritis and the Hot4Cryo project come in.
“At the moment, such microscopes do not exist neither in Greece nor generally in southeastern Europe, but they will come because the administration of the National Hellenic Research Foundation secured significant funding. So, I am responsible for bringing the knowledge from Germany, setting up an electron microscopy laboratory, and training scientists to become specialists in this method,” Mr. Kastritis tells me.
He further adds that “the NHRF, a unique research center, received this funding from Greece 2.0 and the European Investment Bank. With the funds received, the NHRF chose to renovate its building (which is a particularly impressive building but dates back to 1958) and invest in modern, state-of-the-art research equipment. Both the renovation and the equipment include the microscopy rooms as well as the microscopes themselves.”
The goal of Hot4Cryo, in summary, is twofold: first, to accelerate the process of integrating, installing, and utilizing cryo-electron microscopes at the NHRF. Second, to promote communication about the project, encouraging scientists in Greece and abroad to come and analyze their samples using these specific cryo-electron microscopes. The central objective is clear: to conduct pioneering biological research competitive on a global scale.
The applications are of cryo-electron microscopy in our daily lives are numerous. All images that help us understand how cells are structured come from this method. It provides us with fundamental knowledge of cellular and structural biology. Essentially, it helps us understand the three-dimensional structure of cellular components, aiding in our comprehension of matter.
Furthermore, the promotion of knowledge about matter is and should be an end in itself for sciences like biology. However, there are also very specific applications. A significant example is the coronavirus. By analyzing samples, we were able to see the virus in great detail, which formed the basis of scientific data mainly from electron microscopy. With this knowledge, we design drugs that prevent the virus from entering our cells.
Applications can also be found in biotechnology and many other fields. Moreover, computer science plays a huge role in analyzing our data: since we analyze tens of thousands of images per experiment, enormous storage space (on the order of petabytes), state-of-the-art graphics cards, and cutting-edge machine learning/artificial intelligence algorithms are required.
In conclusion, having learned much more than expected when first encountering the term, I asked Panagiotis Kastritis if there was anything else he would like to add. Once again, he emphasized that scientific research is now a much more collaborative process than what we may typically imagine. Cryo-electron microscopy itself is a prime example because visualizing matter at large scales is a significant step toward understanding its function.
Published on: 26.01.24