This is your last news to see this monthUnlimited access to all content for only € 3 the first monthAlready a subscriber?Log inYou have news to see this monthYou have 1 news left to see this monthUnlimited access to all content for only € 3 the first monthAlready a subscriber?Log inDavid Gil, technical director of the facility, examines the microscope./ Pedro UrrestiA white cabinet with black doors protects one of the most advanced electron microscopes in the world at the Biofisika Institute.«It allows you to see the foundations of life at atomic resolution.To know how a molecule works, you need to know its three-dimensional structure, the position of each atom in space, and a protein can have tens of thousands of atoms ", explains Iban Ubarretxena, director of the mixed center of the University of the Basque Country and the Superior Council of Scientific Investigations.The microscope, which has cost 4.5 million euros contributed by the Basque Government, will allow progress in the development of new therapeutic strategies against neurodegenerative and infectious diseases and cancer.Its assembly began at the end of September, it will begin to function in January and yesterday the Lehendakari visited it.Leioa's Thermo Fisher Titan Krios G4 is located on a concrete block that in turn rests on a slab of the same material anchored to the bedrock and isolated from the rest of the building.“The cabinet is designed to protect it from vibrations and to keep it at a stable temperature.And the room is also designed so that the temperature does not vary more than half a degree and so that no vibration is transmitted to it.The technical specifications are more rigorous than those of an operating room and even those of a clean room, ”says Ubarretxena.Everything so that the molecules are not moved in the photos.The headquarters of the Institute of Biofisika, inaugurated in 2016, was planned to house an instrument that cannot be placed anywhere.It was the biochemist Félix Goñi, founder of the Biofisika Institute, who reserved an area on paper for such equipment.“He had a vision to make room for a room that could house a high-resolution microscope.Not necessarily an electron cryomicroscope like this one.At the time, people were thinking more about an atomic force microscope ”, recalls the director of the center and professor Ikerbasque.Starting from the basic infrastructure - an empty space in the middle of the building with a concrete slab anchored to the rock - the apparatus room and other dependencies have now been fitted out.In total, one million euros between works and auxiliary equipment.'An electron microscope uses electrons to study the structure of matter.Electrons are generated at the top and accelerated in an electric field of 300,000 volts.They take a speed close to that of light, impact on the sample and pass through it.At the bottom, a camera takes a photo of the sample, ”explains Ubarretxena.The interior of the apparatus, which weighs more than 2 tons, is empty because, otherwise, the electrons would interact with the air.This forces, in turn, to freeze the liquid sample."If we just put it into the microscope, since there is a vacuum, it would evaporate."The team is located on the -1 floor of the Biofisika Institute, above a corner of the parking lot.As it is isolated from the structure of the building, the car traffic itself does not cause any vibration in it, but a parking space below has been blocked because "a moving metal generates an electromagnetic field" and would disturb its operation.In the parking lot, a door gives access to the foundations of the microscope;another, to a sample preparation laboratory;and a third, to auxiliary equipment.In addition, a small unit keeps the microscope packaging boxes, whose maintenance, once the five-year warranty expires, will cost about 250,000 euros per year."The commitment to this equipment is part of an ambitious initiative by the Department of Education to import disruptive technologies into the Basque Country, technologies that make our science take an important leap in quality", highlights Ubarretxena.Now the Institute of Biofisika has three experts in the handling of the equipment and a computer engineer."A microscope like this generates a day on the order of 10 to 20 terabytes of images, which must be saved, processed ...".Determining the structure of a molecule requires two days of data collection.Then, from hundreds of thousands of photos of a molecule frozen in different orientations, scientists can establish its 3D model.David Gil in the microscope control room at the Biofisika Institute./ Pedro Urresti"To do all of that, you need biochemists to isolate and purify the molecules, engineers to operate the microscope, and biochemists and biophysicists to process the data."There are about two hundred electronic cryomicroscopes in the world and in Europe, only six or seven as sophisticated as Leioa's.No other in Spain.«It puts the Basque Country on the European map of large infrastructures of this type.We will work for research centers and companies.For example, a German biotechnology company or pharmaceutical company will send us their samples in liquid nitrogen, we will put them under the microscope and then they will analyze the data from Germany ”, sums up the director of the Biofisika Institute.Such equipment has "a great impact" on basic research and the biotechnology industry."Antibodies against the coronavirus protein S have been improved because antibody structures bound to this protein have been determined and this has made it possible to know what changes to make to increase its affinity," explains Ubarretxena.The Basque biophysicist recalls that the journal 'Science' concluded in his day that, if, unlike Germany and the United States, France had not obtained its own vaccine against the coronavirus, it was, among other things, because it does not have enough cryomicroscopes.