High-resolution single particle electron cryomicroscopy of membrane protein complexes

背景：细胞膜将细胞与其外部环境区分开来。驻留在细胞膜内的蛋白质称为膜蛋白，是通往细胞的门户。这些蛋白质通过膜运输化学物质，并允许细胞相互通信并感知外部环境。要了解细胞如何进行这些活动，需要确定膜蛋白的三维结构。不幸的是，用传统的方法如X射线结晶学或核磁共振波谱来确定膜蛋白的结构往往是困难的或不可能的。单粒子电子冷冻显微镜(Cryo-EM)是一种能够研究大分子膜蛋白质结构的独特方法。在冷冻-EM中，蛋白质被快速冷冻并用电子显微镜成像。计算图像分析允许将来自多个图像的信息组合到蛋白质的3D地图中。在研究膜蛋白时，我们和其他一两个小组已经能够使用单粒子低温EM获得~1 nm(百万分之一毫米)的分辨率。在这些分辨率下，解释蛋白质功能的特征开始变得可见。

BACKGROUND: Cell membranes differentiate a cell from its external environment. Proteins that reside within cell membranes, known as membrane proteins, serve as the gateway to cells. These proteins transport chemicals across membranes and allow cells to communicate with each other and sense their external environment. Understanding how cells carry out these activities requires determining the 3-D structures of membrane proteins. Unfortunately, it is often difficult or impossible to determine the structures of membrane proteins by traditional methods such as X-ray crystallography or nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Single particle electron cryomicroscopy (cryo-EM) is a method uniquely capable of investigating the structures of large membrane proteins. In cryo-EM, proteins are flash frozen and imaged with an electron microscope. Computational image analysis allows information from many images to be combined into a 3-D map of the protein. We, and one or two other groups, have been able to use single particle cryo-EM to obtain resolutions of ~ 1 nm (one millionth of a millimeter) when studying membrane proteins. At these resolutions, the features that explain how the proteins function start to become visible.