Seminar

Exploiting the capabilities of an

David Gil, PhD

In the last five years, cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM) has rapidly emerged as one of the main techniques in structural biology for determining the structure of macromolecular complexes at near-atomic resolution in a near native state. The development of new electron counting direct detection cameras, in combination with more automated transmission electron microscope´s (TEM) and new image-processing algorithms, have resulted in a ‘resolution revolution’ in cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and a surge in the popularity of this technique in the pharmaceutical industry. To access external “state-of-the-art” European cryo-EM platforms (UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Italy) electron microscopy researchers at the CIC bioGUNE, as well as within the Basque Country and Spain, use our in-house facilities to optimize sample preparation conditions and determine the sample´s structure at low resolution to establish its suitability for high-resolution data collection. This preliminarily screening is a vital and essential service offered by the platform that drives research and innovation in the Basque country. Moreover, although from a technological perspective the EM Platform at the CIC bioGUNE cannot offer competitive high-resolution data collection there are still many biological questions requiring only a general mechanistic picture that can be answered with current equipment. In this talk he will illustrate how the EM Platform at the CIC bioGUNE participates in diverse industrial and academic research projects including time-resolving dynamic processes, understanding structural changes in biological systems induced by external agents, characterizing native conformational changes of flexible macromolecular complexes by single-particle analysis (the screening of sample conditions for cryo-EM experiments), describing interactions between biological systems and inorganic materials (polymers, nano-particles, graphene oxide surfaces, bacterial magnetosomes, etc) and using in vitro artificial systems to mimic cellular processes. The future of cryo-EM is certain to be exciting, with new biological insights gained from this powerful technique contributing to diverse fields like pharmacology, chemical biology and cancer biology. It is clear that they have the opportunity to capitalize on the competitive services offered by the platform and the CIC bioGUNE´s extensive expertise in the field, in particular, when accompanied by a vital and strategic investment in the technological advancements that have made this ‘resolution revolution’ possible. �
�https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.240
https://www.cell.com/structure/fulltext/S0969-2126(18)30129-1
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David_Gil-Carton/contributions