Date: 22.06.2026
Biology Centre Hosts Prestigious Electron Microscopy Course
Young scientists from around the world are learning state-of-the-art methods and the most advanced technologies for preparing biological samples for electron microscopy at a hands-on course organized by the Electron Microscopy Laboratory of the Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences from June 22 to July 3 in České Budějovice. Supported by the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), this prestigious course has been held annually for 40 years at leading European electron microscopy laboratories and is taking place in South Bohemia for the seventh time.
An international team of 15 leading experts is training 22 early-career researchers selected from a pool of 80 applicants from across the globe. The most distant participants have travelled from Argentina and Taiwan. “The aim of the course is to teach students how to prepare biological samples using the latest techniques and methodologies. These include cryo-methods, where a tiny sample, for example of mouse tissue, is rapidly frozen using liquid nitrogen and then cut into slices - ultrathin sections up to 100 nm thick. To put that into perspective, it is like slicing a human hair into a thousand sections, all while working at temperatures below –100 °C,” explains Marie Vancová, Head of the Electron Microscopy Laboratory, describing one of the technically demanding methods taught during the course.
Participants will subsequently apply their newly acquired skills in their home laboratories, enabling them to generate new insights across a wide range of biological disciplines.
The Electron Microscopy Laboratory of the Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences is one of the leading facilities in this field in the Czech Republic. As part of the Czech BioImaging and Euro-BioImaging infrastructures, it provides services to scientific teams not only from the Biology Centre but also from across the Central European region. The laboratory maintains long-term collaborations with electron microscope manufacturers in Brno to optimize and develop new approaches for biological sample preparation tailored to emerging electron microscopy technologies.
