Cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) provides impressive near-atomic resolution for determining biomolecular structures, earning its creators — Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson — the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2017. Cryo-EM has become an increasingly popular as a complementary method to X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonsnce (NMR) spectroscopy, having the benefits of smaller sample size requirements and the ability to observe structures in their native state, without the need for crystallization.
Stephen Brohawn, an assistant professor at UC Berkeley's Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, recently served as senior author on a study into a unique membrane channel protein expressed by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, using cryo-EM to determine its 3D structure and investigate it as a potential drug target.
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