Cryo-electron Microscopy

A newly determined structure from the lab of Yi Ren reveals information about the mRNA export pathway and suggests that herpes viruses could hijack that interaction to infect their host. The new structures also reveal how certain mutations in the protein complex could play a role in cancers. Read More

Cryo-ET suffers from the “missing wedge” problem: as samples become more tilted, their thickness at the extremes is increased and sample penetration decreases. William Wan and collaborators describe the creation of a new subtomogram averaging package called STOPGAP. Read More

Research led by co-first authors Emily Schmitz, a graduate student in the Chemical and Physical Biology program, and Hirohide Takahashi, a research instructor in molecular physiology and biophysics, identified the structure of the human type-3 inositol 1,4,5-triphosphate, or IP3, receptor in several conformations using cryo-electron microscopy. Schmitz and Takahasi, who… Read More