Skip to Main Content
Biomolecular and Bioanalytical Techniques
book

Biomolecular and Bioanalytical Techniques

by Vasudevan Ramesh
June 2019
Beginner to intermediate content levelBeginner to intermediate
576 pages
25h 29m
English
Wiley
Content preview from Biomolecular and Bioanalytical Techniques

18 Cryo‐TEM and Biological Structure Determination

Szymon W. Manka and Carolyn A. Moores

Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology, Birkbeck College, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HX, UK

18.1 Significance and Background

The electron microscope (EM) has been a key tool for biologists since its invention by Ernst Ruska in the 1930s (Table 18.1). Use of EM to visualise cell samples led to the discovery of many key aspects of cell ultrastructure and function, while EM imaging of molecular samples was first used for 3D structure determination of macromolecular complexes in the late 1960s [1].

Table 18.1 Nobel Prizes awarded in EM (www.nobelprize.org).

Name Year Nobel citation
Joseph John Thompson Physics, 1906 ‘In recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases’
Aaron Klug Chemistry, 1982 ‘For his development of crystallographic electron microscopy and his structural elucidation of biologically important nucleic acid–protein complexes’
Ernst Ruska Physics, 1986 ‘For his fundamental work in electron optics, and for the design of the first electron microscope’
Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank, Richard Henderson Chemistry, 2017 ‘For developing cryo‐electron microscopy for the high‐resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution’

EM of biological samples brings challenges. The first is the fundamentally destructive nature of the electron radiation used in the ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

BioCoder #11

BioCoder #11

O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Emerging Areas in Bioengineering

Emerging Areas in Bioengineering

Ho Nam Chang, Sang Yup Lee, Jens Nielsen, Gregory Stephanopoulos

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781119483960Purchase book