Latest developments in cryo-EM and a goodbye to iNEXT-Discovery

The final consortium meeting of the iNEXT-Discovery project took place in Brno in June 2024, alongside the Symposium on Recent Advances in Cryo-EM. This meeting marks the conclusion of the Horizon 2020 funded European project iNEXT-Discovery for access to structural biology services for translational research and discovery. 

Technology developments bringing structural biology and imaging closer

Euro-BioImaging is a partner in the iNEXT-Discovery project to facilitate the interlinkage of communities and technology developers at the interphase between structural biology and bioimaging. This is particularly relevant with the recent and fast developments in Electron Microscopy. Through new technologies, cryo-EM is enabling increasingly high-throughput structural determination of isolated proteins as well as pushing towards in situ structural biology - determining protein structure and interactions directly inside their cellular context. Combining this with advances in Correlative Light and Electron microscopy and volumeEM, there is an increasing overlap of methods and approaches between structural biology and bioimaging.

Celebrating supported research and scouting technology trends

The iNEXT-Discovery 2024 final consortium meeting was hosted by CEITEC Masaryk University in Brno, which hosts facilities that are part of both Instruct and Euro-BioImaging’sBrno Node. The meeting provided a chance to catch up on the latest technology developments in cryo-EM and beyond and celebrate the outcomes of the project. The meeting highlighted the exciting science supported by iNEXT-Discovery and the technology developments driven by the Joint Research Activities within the project. At the same time, the experts looked to the future at new technology trends - from even higher-field NMR systems to continued advances in cryo-EM sample preparation and technology, and the overarching role of AI in supporting the analysis of complex datasets.

Connecting and informing the imaging community 

Parts of the Euro-BioImaging community have been very interested in the opportunities represented by iNEXT-Discovery for user access, but also in the technical developments coming from the JRAs. This is mostly focussed on the cryo-EM aspects of the project. This interest was apparent in the active participation in the information session and special events Euro-BioImaging held to highlight the iNEXT-Discovery project to our community.

Within the iNEXT-Discovery project, Euro-BioImaging supported various outreach events to connect the structural biology and imaging communities, such as the satellite iNEXT-Discovery event at the 2023 All-Hands Nodes meeting. We are always glad to collaborate with our partner research infrastructures and together advance the applications of technology to increasingly diverse scientific questions.

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871037