How Cryo-Electron Microscopy Can Accelerate Drug Discovery
Cryo-EM is a powerful tool in structural biology, allowing researchers to obtain high-resolution reconstructions of macromolecular structures. Here, we will discuss the role of cryo-EM in drug discovery and its potential to revolutionize the field. Drug discovery plays a crucial role in healthcare, but the process is very costly and time-consuming. Fortunately, advancements in molecular […]
Cryo-FIB Lift-Out: Enabling Cryo-ET Imaging for Tissues
As the boundaries of cryo-electron tomography are continuously being pushed, there are major advancements in the development of cryo-FIB lift-out techniques, which enable the imaging of tissue sections. What are the latest developments? Cryo-electron tomography (Cryo-ET) has transformed our understanding of the structural organization and functioning of proteins and macromolecules in their near-native state. In […]
What is the difference between cryo-EM and cryo-ET?
Advancements in technology increased the popularity of cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) techniques such as cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) and single-particle analysis (SPA). For those new to the field, this blog post explains the difference between cryo-EM and cryo-ET. Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is a general term for performing electron microscopy at cryogenic temperatures. When imaging with an electron microscope, […]
Rubisco assembly: the promise of cryo-ET for synthetic biologists
In this blog post, we discuss the ultrastructure and assembly mechanisms of Rubisco, revealed by cryo-ET. Together with advances in synthetic biology, these insights could pave the way for CO2 fixation using bacterial microcompartments. Bacterial microcompartments are widely known for their essential role in catabolic processes. Among them, carboxysomes (CBs) are responsible for CO2 fixation. In […]
Revealing the ultrastructure of autophagic membranes during different stages of biogenesis with correlative cryo-ET
By visualizing membrane ultrastructure directly in the cells, researchers can better understand their diversity, dynamics, and role. In this blog post, we highlight a beautiful example where researchers used cryo-CLEM to reveal the ultrastructural changes in the autophagosome membrane during its biogenesis. Autophagy is a process in which cells maintain their internal homeostasis, by clearing […]
Subtomogram averaging in the cryo-ET workflow
Cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) allows the 3D visualization of a small volume of a vitreous biological sample with nanometer resolution. Protein complexes that reside in the tomogram can be studied in even greater detail with subtomogram averaging. Subtomogram averaging is the process of aligning multiple 3D reconstructions of identical protein complexes and averaging them. This results […]
