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Lee Tzumin Lab / Publications
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8 Publications

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    Grigorieff Lab
    11/01/15 | Automatic estimation and correction of anisotropic magnification distortion in electron microscopes.
    Grant T, Grigorieff N
    Journal of Structural Biology. 2015 Nov;192(2):204-8. doi: 10.1016/j.jsb.2015.08.006

    We demonstrate a significant anisotropic magnification distortion, found on an FEI Titan Krios microscope and affecting magnifications commonly used for data acquisition on a Gatan K2 Summit detector. We describe a program (mag_distortion_estimate) to automatically estimate anisotropic magnification distortion from a set of images of a standard gold shadowed diffraction grating. We also describe a program (mag_distortion_correct) to correct for the estimated distortion in collected images. We demonstrate that the distortion present on the Titan Krios microscope limits the resolution of a set of rotavirus VP6 images to ∼7 Å, which increases to ∼3 Å following estimation and correction of the distortion. We also use a 70S ribosome sample to demonstrate that in addition to affecting resolution, magnification distortion can also interfere with the classification of heterogeneous data.

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    Grigorieff Lab
    10/06/15 | Structure and conformational states of the bovine mitochondrial ATP synthase by cryo-EM.
    Zhou A, Rohou A, Schep DG, Bason JV, Montgomery MG, Walker JE, Grigorieff N, Rubinstein JL
    eLife. 2015 Oct 06;4:. doi: 10.7554/eLife.10180

    Adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the chemical energy currency of biology, is synthesized in eukaryotic cells primarily by the mitochondrial ATP synthase. ATP synthases operate by a rotary catalytic mechanism where proton translocation through the membrane-inserted FO region is coupled to ATP synthesis in the catalytic F1 region via rotation of a central rotor subcomplex. We report here single particle electron cryomicroscopy (cryo-EM) analysis of the bovine mitochondrial ATP synthase. Combining cryo-EM data with bioinformatic analysis allowed us to determine the fold of the a subunit, suggesting a proton translocation path through the FO region that involves both the a and b subunits. 3D classification of images revealed seven distinct states of the enzyme that show different modes of bending and twisting in the intact ATP synthase. Rotational fluctuations of the c8-ring within the FO region support a Brownian ratchet mechanism for proton-translocation-driven rotation in ATP synthases.

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    Grigorieff Lab
    09/22/15 | Peptide dimer structure in an Aβ(1-42) fibril visualized with cryo-EM.
    Schmidt M, Rohou A, Lasker K, Yadav JK, Schiene-Fischer C, Fändrich M, Grigorieff N
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2015 Sep 22;112(38):11858-63. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1503455112

    Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a fatal neurodegenerative disorder in humans and the main cause of dementia in aging societies. The disease is characterized by the aberrant formation of β-amyloid (Aβ) peptide oligomers and fibrils. These structures may damage the brain and give rise to cerebral amyloid angiopathy, neuronal dysfunction, and cellular toxicity. Although the connection between AD and Aβ fibrillation is extensively documented, much is still unknown about the formation of these Aβ aggregates and their structures at the molecular level. Here, we combined electron cryomicroscopy, 3D reconstruction, and integrative structural modeling methods to determine the molecular architecture of a fibril formed by Aβ(1-42), a particularly pathogenic variant of Aβ peptide. Our model reveals that the individual layers of the Aβ fibril are formed by peptide dimers with face-to-face packing. The two peptides forming the dimer possess identical tilde-shaped conformations and interact with each other by packing of their hydrophobic C-terminal β-strands. The peptide C termini are located close to the main fibril axis, where they produce a hydrophobic core and are surrounded by the structurally more flexible and charged segments of the peptide N termini. The observed molecular architecture is compatible with the general chemical properties of Aβ peptide and provides a structural basis for various biological observations that illuminate the molecular underpinnings of AD. Moreover, the structure provides direct evidence for a steric zipper within a fibril formed by full-length Aβ peptide.

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    Grigorieff Lab
    08/28/15 | Evaluation of super-resolution performance of the K2 electron-counting camera using 2D crystals of aquaporin-0.
    Chiu P, Li X, Li Z, Beckett B, Brilot AF, Grigorieff N, Agard DA, Cheng Y, Walz T
    Journal of Structural Biology. 2015 Aug 28:. doi: 10.1016/j.jsb.2015.08.015

    The K2 Summit camera was initially the only commercially available direct electron detection camera that was optimized for high-speed counting of primary electrons and was also the only one that implemented centroiding so that the resolution of the camera can be extended beyond the Nyquist limit set by the physical pixel size. In this study, we used well-characterized two-dimensional crystals of the membrane protein aquaporin-0 to characterize the performance of the camera below and beyond the physical Nyquist limit and to measure the influence of electron dose rate on image amplitudes and phases.

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    Grigorieff Lab
    08/13/15 | CTFFIND4: Fast and accurate defocus estimation from electron micrographs.
    Rohou A, Grigorieff N
    Journal of Structural Biology. 2015 Aug 13;192(2):216-21. doi: 10.1016/j.jsb.2015.08.008

    CTFFIND is a widely-used program for the estimation of objective lens defocus parameters from transmission electron micrographs. Defocus parameters are estimated by fitting a model of the microscope's contrast transfer function (CTF) to an image's amplitude spectrum. Here we describe modifications to the algorithm which make it significantly faster and more suitable for use with images collected using modern technologies such as dose fractionation and phase plates. We show that this new version preserves the accuracy of the original algorithm while allowing for higher throughput. We also describe a measure of the quality of the fit as a function of spatial frequency and suggest this can be used to define the highest resolution at which CTF oscillations were successfully modeled.

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    Grigorieff Lab
    07/16/15 | Structure of the L protein of vesicular stomatitis virus from electron cryomicroscopy.
    Liang B, Li Z, Jenni S, Rahmeh AA, Morin BM, Grant T, Grigorieff N, Harrison SC, Whelan SP
    Cell. 2015 Jul 16;162(2):314-27. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2015.06.018

    The large (L) proteins of non-segmented, negative-strand RNA viruses, a group that includes Ebola and rabies viruses, catalyze RNA-dependent RNA polymerization with viral ribonucleoprotein as template, a non-canonical sequence of capping and methylation reactions, and polyadenylation of viral messages. We have determined by electron cryomicroscopy the structure of the vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) L protein. The density map, at a resolution of 3.8 Å, has led to an atomic model for nearly all of the 2109-residue polypeptide chain, which comprises three enzymatic domains (RNA-dependent RNA polymerase [RdRp], polyribonucleotidyl transferase [PRNTase], and methyltransferase) and two structural domains. The RdRp resembles the corresponding enzymatic regions of dsRNA virus polymerases and influenza virus polymerase. A loop from the PRNTase (capping) domain projects into the catalytic site of the RdRp, where it appears to have the role of a priming loop and to couple product elongation to large-scale conformational changes in L.

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    Grigorieff Lab
    05/29/15 | Measuring the optimal exposure for single particle cryo-EM using a 2.6 Å reconstruction of rotavirus VP6.
    Grant T, Grigorieff N
    eLife. 2015 May 29;4:10.7554. doi: 10.7554/eLife.06980

    Biological specimens suffer radiation damage when imaged in an electron microscope, ultimately limiting the attainable resolution. At a given resolution, an optimal exposure can be defined that maximizes the signal-to-noise ratio in the image. Using a 2.6 Å resolution single particle cryo-EM reconstruction of rotavirus VP6, determined from movies recorded with a total exposure of 100 electrons/Å(2), we obtained accurate measurements of optimal exposure values over a wide range of resolutions. At low and intermediate resolutions our measured values are considerably higher than obtained previously for crystalline specimens, indicating that both images and movies should be collected with higher exposures than are generally used. We demonstrate a method of using our optimal exposure values to filter movie frames, yielding images with improved contrast that lead to higher resolution reconstructions. This 'high-exposure' technique should benefit cryo-EM work on all types of samples, especially those of relatively low molecular mass.

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    Grigorieff Lab
    04/23/15 | A primer to single-particle cryo-electron microscopy
    Cheng Y, Grigorieff N, Penczek PA, Walz T
    Cell . 2015 Apr 23;161(3):438-49. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2015.03.050

    Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) of single-particle specimens is used to determine the structure of proteins and macromolecular complexes without the need for crystals. Recent advances in detector technology and software algorithms now allow images of unprecedented quality to be recorded and structures to be determined at near-atomic resolution. However, compared with X-ray crystallography, cryo-EM is a young technique with distinct challenges. This primer explains the different steps and considerations involved in structure determination by single-particle cryo-EM to provide an overview for scientists wishing to understand more about this technique and the interpretation of data obtained with it, as well as a starting guide for new practitioners.

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