“ When I came here, I would not have guessed we’d be getting instruments like these.”
N AT I O N A L I N S T I T U T E S O F H E A LT H ; P R OT E I N S P I K E : J A S O N M C L E L L A N , U N I V E R S I T Y O F T E X A S AT A U S T I N
— Tommi White, Director, Electron Microscopy Core
son, its director. Its design gives it a “bright,” or intense, source of the neutrons used to create the radioactive materials, called nuclides or isotopes. That allows the reactor to make small amounts of material intensely radioactive, and smaller is better when giving patients anything radioactive, he says. Isotopes used for medicines get shipped elsewhere for processing, Robertson explains. “But those for research, yes, they can pick it up right here,” he says. “Or we take it directly to the vet school here on campus, we take it to the chemistry department, we take it to the biochemistry department.” Or to Anderson’s center, just across the street from the reactor. “My lab and all the university’s investigators can be the first to test the new radionuclides they’ll produce,” Anderson says. So the new imaging gear magnifies the university’s unusual advantages in combined med, vet and reactor facilities. And it thrusts the university into a different league, says White, who directs electron microscopy. She came to Mizzou in 2012 after studies that included a stint at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). “Our microscopes here were good,” she says, but she’d had a glimpse of better when at NIH, with its earlier version of the high-res Krios electron microscope. “When I came here, I would not have guessed we’d be getting instruments like these.” M
This page, counterclockwise from bottom right: An electron microscope picture of a nerve ending that has been broken open to reveal vesicles (orange and blue). Fluid-filled sacs, the vesicles transmit messages through the nervous system. • Coloring the virus (green) amid cells (red) helps to illustrate how aggressively COVID-19 can invade and reproduce in its human hosts. Scientists isolated these cells from a patient sample for study under an electron microscope. • These microscopes can image the virus — the round, blue objects — that causes COVID-19 as it replicates and emerges from cells cultured in a laboratory. The virus wears a corona of “spike proteins” through which it invades human cells. • Magnification with the most-powerful microscopes (like Krios G4) enables scientists to model the individual molecules that make up the spike protein, a key step toward developing vaccines that can slow the virus’ spread. SPRING 2021 39
