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Biophysics in the Understanding, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Infectious Diseases Speaker Abstracts
9
The Cryo-EM Revolution: Applications to Biology and Medicine
Sriram Subramaniam
.
NCI/NIH, Bethesda, USA.
Recent breakthroughs in the field of cryo-electron microscopy provide new prospects for
determination of the structures of a variety of macromolecular assemblies and small dynamic
protein complexes that are not amenable to analysis by X-ray crystallography or NMR
spectroscopy. In addition, advances in technologies for imaging whole cells and tissues in 3D at
high resolution have opened up new vistas for 3D structural imaging. I will review emerging
opportunities in molecular and cellular imaging that are enabled with these developments, and
discuss applications to cancer research and infectious disease in the coming decade.
Main points:
• Cryo-EM, electron tomography and related methods in 3D electron microscopy provide
revolutionary new opportunities for bridging key imaging gaps in biology.
• Advances in correlative light and electron microscopic imaging enable simultaneous imaging
of the “needle” and the “haystack” of cellular architecture.
• Advances in electron tomography and subvolume averaging are providing new and important
insights into the structure and mechanism of neutralization of enveloped viruses such as HIV,
influenza and Ebola.
• Advances in cryo-EM technology enable determination of structures of protein complexes and
membrane proteins at near-atomic resolution, and offer unprecedented opportunities for
accelerating drug discovery.