Division of Structural Biology
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Structural biology by cryo-electron microscopy
Living organisms are formed by biomolecules such as proteins and are maintained by their chemical reactions. In our research division, we are studying the structure of these biomolecules using cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) to clarify these molecular mechanisms.
Cryo-EM is a method for directly observing a biological sample with an electron microscope by rapidly freezing and keeping it at a low temperature. This makes it possible to analyze the structure of biomolecules that are close to the living state at the atomic level.
The main research facilities are a 300kV Cold-FEG cryoEM equipped with the original bottom mount energy filter (TITAN Krios G4), 200 kV ceyo-EM equipped with an electron direct detection camera and in-column energy filter (JEM2200FS), and cryo-FIB SEM (Aquilos2)(Fig. 1).
The 3D structure of biomolecules is reconstructed by single particle analysis or electron tomography (ET) with GP-GPU computers.
Figure 2 shows an example of cryo-EM result, which is a complex of SEARS-CoV-2 S-protein and its neutralized VHH antibody (Haga et al. 2021). It revealed how the antibody neutralized the SEARS-CoV-2.
We welcome the participation of young researchers and graduate students who are interested in such structural biology.
Fig. 1
300kV cryo-EM, TITAN Krios G4 (right), 200kV cryo-EM, JEM2200FS (middle), and cryo-FIB SEM (right).
Fig. 2
Cryo-EM study of a complex of SEARS-CoV-2 S-protein and its neutralized VHH antibody. EM image (upper left), 2D class averages (lower left), 3D recostruction (lower middle), and the moleculaer models (right).
Selected publications
*Kamiya et al., Structure 30(2), 300 (2021)*Pan et al., Nature Plant 7(8), 1119 (2021)
*Song et al., Int J Mol Sci 22(9), 4519 (2021)
*Burton-Smith & Murata, Microscopy 70(6), 477 (2021)