Grants and Infrastructure Access FICUS Project (2025-2027)

Facilities Integrating Collaborations for User Science

Storage, metabolism, and microbial vision: molecular mechanisms of nitrogen-rich biocrystallization

This highly competitive project combines resources from:

• Joint Genome Institute (JGI) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL)
• Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)

The project integrates:

• transcriptomics
• metabolomics
• proteomics
• stimulate Raman microscopy
• cryogenic electron microscopy

to uncover molecular regulation of biocrystallization.

We are grateful to the JGI LBNL and EMSL PNNL review panels for supporting this project and enabling interdisciplinary studies of crystal biology.

Molecular Foundry – Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2026–2027)

Facility access to run near-field optical spectroscopies using the custom build SNOM on top of atomic force microscopy in a challenging setup employing visible light reflectance spectroscopy on biological samples.

Advanced Light Source Beamtime Awards (2024–2027)

Recent successful proposals include beamtime access to:

Laue microdiffraction of biogenic crystals – beamline 12.3.2

Powder X-ray diffraction of purine crystals – beamline 12.2.1

Infrared microspectroscopy of microbial crystals – beamline 1.4

Soft X-ray tomography of crystal-based eyespots - beamline

Together these awards provide access to world-leading synchrotron facilities critical for structural characterization of biological crystals.

EMSL Cryo-EM Program (2026–2028)

Awarded access to:

• Krios G3i cryo-electron microscope
• MicroED workflows
• Cryo-electron tomography

This project will provide the first structural characterization of newly discovered microbial biocrystals at near-atomic resolution

Czech BioImaging Open Access (2025–2026)

Awarded access to:

• Focused-ion beam scanning electron microscopy (FIB SEM)
• Correlative light and electron microscopy
• Laser scanning confocal microscopy LeicaSP8 reflectance spectroscopy
• Interference reflectance microscopy (IRM)
• Nanolive holographic microscopy

Technology Agency of the Czech Republic (2021–2022)

Zeta

Software development  

Automation of Raman spectral map analysis.

Beamtime at European Synchrotron Radiation Facility

ID16A Nano-Imaging beamline X-ray NanoProbe, 18 shifts, Grenoble, France. Co-researcher.

Czech Science Foundation (2020–2023)

Guanine crystals as nitrogen storage in Chromera velia. Co-researcher.

Charles University Grant Agency: GAUK individual grant (2017–2019)

Characterization of organelles in Eustigmatophyceae.