冷凍電鏡實現蛋白結構的原子水平解析
作者:
小柯機器人發布時間:2020/10/25 22:25:16
近日,德國馬普研究所Holger Stark及其課題利用冷凍電鏡實現蛋白結構的原子水平解析。2020年10月21日,《自然》雜誌在線發表了這項成果。
研究人員使用最新開發冷凍電鏡(cryo-EM)獲得的1.25 A解析度的去鐵蛋白結構,該結構提供了前所未有的結構細節。這一去鐵蛋白結構的3D信息含量幾乎是當前世界紀錄重建的兩倍(1.54Å解析度)。研究人員能夠可視化蛋白質中的單個原子,查看氫原子的密度並成像單原子化學修飾。除了名義上提高解析度外,研究人員還實現了cryo-EM密度圖質量的顯著提高,這與在基於結構的藥物設計中使用cryo-EM高度相關。
據了解,單顆粒cryo-EM是解析生物大分子三維結構的有力方法。透射電子顯微鏡、檢測器和自動程序的技術發展,加上用戶友好的圖像處理軟體和不斷增長的計算能力,使cryo-EM在過去十年中成為成功且不斷擴展的技術。在高於4Å的解析度下,開始可以建立原子模型,但是要直接可視化蛋白質結構中的真實原子位置,則需要更高的解析度(優於1.5Å),而到目前為止,cryo-EM尚無法實現。原子位置的直接可視化對於理解蛋白質催化的化學反應的機理以及研究藥物如何結合和幹擾蛋白質的功能至關重要。
附:英文原文
Title: Atomic-resolution protein structure determination by cryo-EM
Author: Ka Man Yip, Niels Fischer, Elham Paknia, Ashwin Chari, Holger Stark
Issue&Volume: 2020-10-21
Abstract: Single-particle electron cryo-microscopy (cryo-EM) is a powerful method for solving the three-dimensional structures of biological macromolecules. The technological development of transmission electron microscopes, detectors and automated procedures in combination with user-friendly image processing software and ever-increasing computational power have made cryo-EM a successful and expanding technology over the past decade1. At resolutions better than 4 , atomic model building starts to become possible, but the direct visualization of true atomic positions in protein structure determination requires much higher (better than 1.5 ) resolution, which so far has not been attained by cryo-EM. The direct visualization of atom positions is essential for understanding the mechanisms of protein-catalysed chemical reactions, and for studying how drugs bind to and interfere with the function of proteins2. Here we report a 1.25 -resolution structure of apoferritin obtained by cryo-EM with a newly developed electron microscope that provides, to our knowledge, unprecedented structural detail. Our apoferritin structure has almost twice the 3D information content of the current world record reconstruction (at 1.54 resolution3). We can visualize individual atoms in a protein, see density for hydrogen atoms and image single-atom chemical modifications. Beyond the nominal improvement in resolution, we also achieve a substantial improvement in the quality of the cryo-EM density map, which is highly relevant for using cryo-EM in structure-based drug design.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2833-4
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2833-4