NIEHS Cryo-EM Core Facility

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

During FY2020, the Cryo-EM Core continued to collaborate with regional researchers through the Molecular Microscopy Consortium. The high productivity of the past year is reflected in the number of publications that resulted from over two dozen collaborations. This year we had our first Regional Symposium in cryo-EM organized by NIEHS, Duke and UNC. The symposium featured over 20 speakers and was attended by over 100 local scientists. Most of the work presented in the symposium was performed in collaboration with Core personnel in the context of the Molecular Microscopy Consortium. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we had been actively collaborating with Dr. Priyamvada Acharya at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute and with Dr. Eric Freed at NCI-Frederick on various structural questions involving the main viral antigen of HIV, the envelope glycoprotein Env. In response, we rapidly repurposed our structural virology pipelines to study the analogous SARS-CoV-2 S-protein. This prompted additional collaborations in the IRP, most notably an effort to map the binding sites of nanobodies developed by the group of Dr. Matt Hall at NCATS. We are also collaborating with others at NIEHS to solve the structure of a variety of SARS-CoV-2 non-structural proteins. The collaborations of the Cryo-EM Core have also grown in the NIH Intramural Program. In addition to ongoing work with colleagues at NCI, through the first half of FY2020 we have discussed a series of prospective collaborative projects with other ICs. These include both providing access to current technologies in single particle cryo-EM as well as the development of new capabilities in cryo-electron tomography and in situ structure determination. The interactions led to the organization of an intramural consortium between NIEHS, NCATS, NIA, NIBIB and NIDA for the purchase of a state of the art 300 keV TFS Titan Krios cryo-electron microscope which is expected to be operational at NIEHS by the spring of 2021.