Speaker
Description
The ultrastructure of biological tissues holds cues to critical answers impacting society across multiple domains – from neuroscience to cancer, agriculture or host-pathogen interactions in infectious diseases. Moreover, combining readouts of tissue ultrastructure with functionally relevant insights can be used to accurately interrogate how multicellular systems operate – such as how specific neurons in a neuronal circuit compute information [1, 2]. However, efficient platforms to gather this empirical insight are missing, leaving a large fraction of this research potential untapped. Volume electron microscopy [3, 4] requires slicing the sample sequentially every tens of nanometres making it challenging to address volumes equal or larger than a cubic millimetre [5, 6]. In turn, coherent X-ray imaging can resolve tissue ultrastructure without the need of slicing [7], and 4th-generation synchrotrons provide sufficient flux to make mm3 nanoscale imaging a routine approach available to any research laboratory worldwide [8]. The ALBA synchrotron has started the construction of CORUS, a dual-branch beamline providing capacity for tissue nanoimaging, fluorescence and cryospectroscopy. It will use beams of 10, 19 and 27 keV, and operate under both room temperature and cryo regimes. The nanoImag endstation will be designed for X-ray holographic nanotomography [9, 10] of up to 1 mm3 volumes at ultrastructural resolution, and 3D X-ray fluorescence. The nanoFluoSpec endstation will resolve elemental compositon with subcellular resolution using 3D X-ray Fluorescence and it will discriminate chemical species using X-ray spectroscopy at two energy ranges (4-10 keV and 10-25 keV). Together, CORUS will offer nanoimaging, elemental mapping and speciation with a built-in design for correlative multimodal and multiscale explorations of the structure and function of cells and tissues. It will be useful for multiple areas of academical and industrial research, such as the study of metallomics, pathogen-host interactions, metal nanocomposites, toxicology, biomineralization, bioremediation strategies, food security and sustainable agriculture, and nanoimaging of biological tissues across the plant and animal domain including human clinical biopsies, and revealing connectomes when addressing neuronal tissues.
References
[1] - K. L. Briggman, M. Helmstaedter, and W. Denk, Nature, 471(7337), 183-8 (2011).
[2] - J. A. Bae, M. Baptiste, M. R. Baptiste et al., Nature, 640(8058), 435-447 (2025).
[3] - W. Denk, and H. Horstmann, PLoS Biol, 2(11), e329 (2004).
[4] - C. J. Peddie, C. Genoud, A. Kreshuk et al., Nature Reviews Methods Primers, 2(1), 51 (2022).
[5] - L. F. Abbott, D. D. Bock, E. M. Callaway et al., Cell, 182(6), 1372-1376 (2020).
[6] - G. S. Jefferis, L. Collinson, C. Bosch et al., Wellcome Trust, (2023).
[7] - C. Bosch, T. Aidukas, M. Holler et al Nature Methods, (2025).
[8] - M. Du, Z. W. Di, D. Gursoy et al., J Appl Crystallogr, 54(Pt 2), 386-401 (2021).
[9] - A. T. Kuan, J. S. Phelps, L. A. Thomas et al., Nat Neurosci, 23(12), 1637-1643 (2020).
[10] - Y. Zhang, C. Bosch, T. Ackels et al., bioRxiv, 2025.04.24.650439 (2025).