Video: Researchers Produce the First High-Quality 3-D Images of an Individual Protein

The First High-Quality 3-D Images of an Individual Protein 

The various images of a protein particle (A), the 
3-D rendering (B), and the complex analysis of the 
three individual proteins that make up the particle. 
via Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

PopSci - Proteins are like the workhorses of genetic biology, but they can be notoriously difficult to study. Their structure has everything to do with their function–and sometimes dysfunction–which has far-reaching implications in health and medicine. That’s why it’s such a big deal that a couple of researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have more or less hacked their cryo-electron microscope to see at far greater resolutions than its manufacturer intended and produced the first 3-D images of an individual protein with enough clarity to determine its structure.

Cataloging the shapes and structures of proteins is fairly routine science at this point. Pharmaceutical companies dealing in biologic drugs do so all the time as they search for protein therapies that might relieve one condition or another. But it’s not easy, and these conventional protein models are averages of the analyses of many thousands of molecules because it’s simply too difficult to get the resolutions necessary to image the features of an individual protein.

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