Journal
PROGRESS IN BIOPHYSICS & MOLECULAR BIOLOGY
Volume 103, Issue 1, Pages 122-130Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2010.03.001
Keywords
Single particle reconstruction; Electron microscopy; Membrane-integral protein; Ion channel
Categories
Funding
- Japan New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO)
- Japan Science and Technology agency (JST)
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, KAKENHI
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Membrane proteins play important roles in cell functions such as neurotransmission, muscle contraction, and hormone secretion, but their structures are mostly undetermined. Several techniques have been developed to elucidate the structure of macromolecules; X-ray or electron crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and high-resolution electron microscopy. Electron microscopy-based single particle reconstruction, a computer-aided structure determination method, reconstructs a three-dimensional (3D) structure from projections of monodispersed protein. A large number of particle images are picked up from EM films, aligned and classified to generate two-dimensional (2D) averages, and, using the Euler angle of each 2D average, reconstructed into a 3D structure. This method is challenging due to the necessity for close collaboration between classical biochemistry and innovative information technology, including parallel computing. However, recent progress in electron microscopy, mathematical algorithms, and computational ability has greatly increased the subjects that are considered to be primarily addressable using single particle reconstruction. Membrane proteins are one of these targets to which the single particle reconstruction is successfully applied for understanding of their structures. In this paper, we will introduce recently reconstructed channel-related proteins and discuss the applicability of this technique in understanding molecular structures and their roles in pathology. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available