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Instruct-Barcelona regroups 3 facilities with cutting-edge services in cryoEM (IBMB-CSIC), NMR (CCiTUB) and Sample preparation and X-Ray techniques (ALBA)
The NMR laboratory at the Scientific and Technical Center of the University of Barcelona (CCiTUB) is located within the Barcelona Science Park (PCB), a leading research hub in Southern Europe. The facility is part of the Spanish national infrastructure for biomolecular NMR since 2000. Initially a single-site facility, it was expanded in 2018 to form a distributed infrastructure together with the Bilbao and Madrid nodes. These three sites now offer independent access through Instruct-ERIC, with the Barcelona node formally integrated into the European infrastructure in 2025.
In 2022, the CCiTUB installed Europe’s first 1 GHz NMR spectrometer equipped with a high-temperature superconducting magnet, marking a major milestone in high-field NMR technology. Further upgrades followed in 2024, with new consoles and cryoprobes on the 800 MHz and 600 MHz instruments. The 800 MHz system now includes direct heteronuclear detection capabilities, enabling advanced studies of biomolecular structure and dynamics, particularly for intrinsically disordered proteins and biologics.
The service provides access to high-field liquid-state NMR spectrometers (1.0 GHz, 800 MHz, and 600 MHz), equipped with cryoprobes and direct heteronuclear detection capabilities, and supporting a wide range of applications in structural biology, drug discovery, and biological characterisation, including the study of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs).
The facility offers guidance and support to users with varying levels of expertise. Local research groups and expert staff assist in experimental design, sample preparation, and data interpretation, helping researchers identify how NMR can address their scientific questions.
The IBMB-CSIC cryo-EM Platform entered into operation in 2022, allocating a 200kV Glacios cryo-microscope equipped with an autoloader and a Falcon 4 direct electron detector. The platform is part of the Joint Electron Microscopy Center at ALBA (JEMCA), located at the ALBA synchrotron.
The facility is specialized in rapid optimization and screening of difficult samples, including purified endogenous proteins, membrane proteins and proteins with low molecular weights (below 100 kDa). Sample preparation is performed using a GloCube Plus glow discharge system and two devices for sample vitrification, a Vitrobot Mark IV system and a Leica EM GP plunge freezing. An AKTA Pure protein purification system is available for purification of macromolecular complexes just before vitrification. A GPU workstation is also available for on-the-fly data processing, reaching 2D classification for the initial check of sample quality.
ALBA, the Spanish synchrotron facility, is serving the worldwide scientific and industrial communities with state-of-the-art X-ray beamlines, instruments and services. The supported experiments produce over 300 publications per annum with an average impact factor of 9,5 (2024). The facility started user operation in 2012 and has gradually grown to currently operate 13 beamlines and several microscopes and services, including (only in life sciences) rotation and serial crystallography, infrared spectro-microscopy (FTIR) and soft and hard X-ray tomography, and a fragment screening platform. ALBA is now geared towards its upgrade to a 4th generation facility, ALBA-II, which foresees to see the new beam on 2031 and includes the construction of 2 new beamlines in life sciences and the upgrade of the operating ones.
Since 2025, three ALBA beamlines (and associated services) are included in the portfolio of Instruct:
XALOC is a mature MX beamline with more than 1200 structures solved (2025). The beamline has recently updated the detector and the robot, and offers wavelength-dependent and jet-based SSX experiments. Onsite, remote and unattended access modes are available. The beamtime can be associated with a fragment-screening platform (coming soon).
XAIRA, the new micro-MX beamline operating since 2025, provides a high-flux beam of 4×3 µm² size. The beamline can host fixed-target SSX experiments, as well as low-background rotation and optimal native-phasing experiments by enclosing the entire end-station in a recirculating helium atmosphere. Onsite and remote experiments are available.
MISTRAL beamline provides access to cryo soft X-ray tomography to resolve the 3D structure of whole vitrified cells of up to 10 um thickness and depth at near native conditions at ~30nm resolution, as well as to perform cryo-spectromicroscopy experiments to locate oligoelements. The beamline is accessed through a cryo-STX pipeline, which includes a cryo 3D-SIM microscope to select prior to the beamtime the samples in the grid to collect and improve the productivity of the beamtime. Typically MISTRAL is able to collect a hundred tomograms from two full grids per day. The pipeline can include extra sample preparation days onsite can be requested through Instruct access upon request.
The NMR Facility is located within the Barcelona Science Park (Parc Científic de Barcelona, PCB), near the FC Barcelona Stadium. Main entrance: Carrer Baldiri Reixac, 10–12, 08028 Barcelona
The IBMB-CSIC-ALBA cryo-Electron Miscroscopy Facility is located at the ALBA site (Carrer de la Llum, 2, 26, 08290 Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain)
Onsite experiments are possible in all instruments. cryoEM, and XALOC and XAIRA beamlines offer remote and onsite access. In addition, XALOC offers unattended experiments.
ALBA, the Spanish synchrotron facility, is fully committed to serve the worldwide scientific and industrial communities with state-of-the-art instrumentation and services to address the challenges of our time, most notably in Life Sciences. ALBA is currently operating 11 beamlines, with three more under design or construction phase. Since the start of user operation in 2012, ALBA has catered 8,500 researchers, half of them from European and international institutes. Three beamlines, MISTRAL, XALOC and XAIRA, are of special relevance for the activities of the Instruct-ERIC initiative.
View All X-Ray Techniques at Instruct
The Platform is equipped with 200 kV TEM, Glacios from Thermo Scientific, with extreme field emission gun (X-FEG) optics, equipped with a cryogenic sample manipulator robot for up to 12 grids and a last generation Falcon 4 direct electron detector with a capability of 300 movies/h. Its high level of automation and user guidance of experimental settings enable scientists to efficiently unravel protein structures in 3D, as well as understand their functional context in the biological cell.
Access to the following instrumentation is provided: the Glacios cryo-electron microscope which allows high-resolution SPA and cryoET automated data collection, two plunge freezing robots: Leica EM GP and Thermo Scientific Vitrobot Mark IV and an AKTA Pure protein purification system.
Beamlines XALOC and XAIRA are dedicated to macromolecular crystallography (MX) to provide the 3D structures of proteins, oligonucleotides and protein-protein, protein-DNA or protein-ligand complexes.
The two MX beamlines, XAIRA and XALOC, share resources to tailor the project needs through a joint proposal submission system. A new dewar shipment system and a new data portal to provide a single access point, automated processing and a catalog identification for all data acquired following FAIR data principles are being implemented to improve user experience.
The NMR laboratory at the Scientific and Technical Center of the University of Barcelona (CCiTUB) is located within the Barcelona Science Park (PCB), a leading research hub in Southern Europe. The facility is part of the Spanish national infrastructure R-LRB and has recently joined the European network Instruct-ERIC, offering advanced NMR services to both expert and non-expert users.
The service provides access to high-field liquid-state NMR spectrometers (1.0 GHz, 800 MHz, and 600 MHz), equipped with cryoprobes and direct heteronuclear detection capabilities. These instruments support a wide range of applications in structural biology, drug discovery, and biologics characterisation, including the study of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs).
While protein NMR is often considered a sophisticated technique, the facility offers guidance and support to users with varying levels of expertise. Local research groups and expert staff assist in experimental design, sample preparation, and data interpretation, helping researchers identify how NMR can address their scientific questions.
