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(A) A densitometer for atomic resolution electron cryo-microscopy of biological macromolecules

Reference	JRE10841
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Marin Van Heel
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors
Institution	Imperial College London
Department	Biological Sciences
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	23,312
Status	Completed
Type	Research Grant
Start date	01/01/1999
End date	01/07/1999
Duration	6 months

Abstract

Although the modern electron microscope had a resolution better than 2 Angstrom; enough to reveal the polypeptide chain of a protein directly, radiation-sensitive biological material requires the use of very low exposure levels which produce images with extremely low signal-to-noise ratios (SNR). Many images of many samples need to be collected in order to 'harvest' the massive amounts of information needed to achieve high-resolution, high-SNR results. Atomic resolution results have already been obtained using electron images of 2D crystals of purple membrane (Dr Richard Henderson) and of several other membrane proteins. One of the greatest challenges of modern biological electron microscopy is to achieve atomic resolution for non-crystalline biomolecular assemblies, such as icosahedral viruses and ribosomes. The statistics of the data collection for such uncrystallised material is even more critically dependant on the characteristics of the densitometer than it is for 2D crystals. We anticipate that the first atomic-resolution breakthrough will be achieved with icosahedral viruses because of the added advantage of their 60-fol symmetry redundancy. Sub-manometer resolutions (currently at approx.12 Angstrom) of the ribosome are anticipated within the year.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Closed Committee - Biomolecular Sciences (BMS)
Research Topics	X – not assigned to a current Research Topic
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	Joint Research Equipment Initiative 1998 (JE3) [1998]
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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