What we have learned from ribosome structures

2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 567-574 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Ramakrishnan

The determination of the high-resolution structures of ribosomal subunits in the year 2000 and of the entire ribosome a few years later are revolutionizing our understanding of the role of the ribosome in translation. In the present article, I summarize the main contributions from our laboratory to this worldwide effort. These include the determination of the structure of the 30S ribosomal subunit and its complexes with antibiotics, the role of the 30S subunit in decoding, and the high-resolution structure of the entire 70S ribosome complexed with mRNA and tRNA.


FEBS Letters ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 584 (12) ◽  
pp. 2539-2547 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yo Sonoda ◽  
Alex Cameron ◽  
Simon Newstead ◽  
Hiroshi Omote ◽  
Yoshinori Moriyama ◽  
...  


Cell ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 107 (5) ◽  
pp. 679-688 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joerg Harms ◽  
Frank Schluenzen ◽  
Raz Zarivach ◽  
Anat Bashan ◽  
Sharon Gat ◽  
...  


2012 ◽  
Vol 68 (9) ◽  
pp. 1140-1151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnieszka J. Pietrzyk ◽  
Santosh Panjikar ◽  
Anna Bujacz ◽  
Jochen Mueller-Dieckmann ◽  
Malgorzata Lochynska ◽  
...  






2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Herzik ◽  
Mengyu Wu ◽  
Gabriel C. Lander

Determining high-resolution structures of biological macromolecules with masses of less than 100 kilodaltons (kDa) has long been a goal of the cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) community. While the Volta Phase Plate has enabled cryo-EM structure determination of biological specimens of this size range, use of this instrumentation is not yet fully automated and can present technical challenges. Here, we show that conventional defocus-based cryo-EM methodologies can be used to determine the high-resolution structures of specimens amassing less than 100 kDa using a transmission electron microscope operating at 200 keV coupled with a direct electron detector. Our ~2.9 Å structure of alcohol dehydrogenase (82 kDa) proves that bound ligands can be resolved with high fidelity, indicating that these methodologies can be used to investigate the molecular details of drug-target interactions. Our ~2.8 Å and ~3.2 Å resolution structures of methemoglobin demonstrate that distinct conformational states can be identified within a dataset for proteins as small as 64 kDa. Furthermore, we provide the first sub-nanometer cryo-EM structure of a protein smaller than 50 kDa.



IUCrJ ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-194
Author(s):  
Jan-Philip Wieferig ◽  
Deryck J. Mills ◽  
Werner Kühlbrandt

As cryo-EM approaches the physical resolution limits imposed by electron optics and radiation damage, it becomes increasingly urgent to address the issues that impede high-resolution structure determination of biological specimens. One of the persistent problems has been beam-induced movement, which occurs when the specimen is irradiated with high-energy electrons. Beam-induced movement results in image blurring and loss of high-resolution information. It is particularly severe for biological samples in unsupported thin films of vitreous water. By controlled devitrification of conventionally plunge-frozen samples, the suspended film of vitrified water was converted into cubic ice, a polycrystalline, mechanically stable solid. It is shown that compared with vitrified samples, devitrification reduces beam-induced movement in the first 5 e Å−2 of an exposure by a factor of ∼4, substantially enhancing the contribution of the initial, minimally damaged frames to a structure. A 3D apoferritin map reconstructed from the first frames of 20 000 particle images of devitrified samples resolved undamaged side chains. Devitrification of frozen-hydrated specimens helps to overcome beam-induced specimen motion in single-particle cryo-EM, as a further step towards realizing the full potential of cryo-EM for high-resolution structure determination.



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