BIO Seminar: Development of a DNA nanotechnology platform cryo-EM stu...

BIO Seminar: Development of a DNA nanotechnology platform cryo-EM stu...

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Speaker: Tural Aksel, Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, University of California, San Francisco

Title:  Development of a DNA nanotechnology platform cryo-EM studies of small proteins

Date/Time: July 16, 2019  /  11.00-11.40

Place: FENS 2019

Abstract: Single particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is emerging as a powerful technique for visualizing structures of macromolecules without the need for large sample quantities often required for alternative techniques such as X-ray crystallography and NMR. Recent technological advances have helped to achieve near-atomic structure determination of macromolecules by cryo-EM. However, cryo-EM for structure determination of small (<100 kDa) macromolecules can be challenging. Cryo-EM image data are low contrast and small particles often lack well-defined structural features required for the particle alignment during 3D reconstruction. I am developing a novel suite of tools using DNA nanotechnology to overcome size limitations of cryo-EM. Here I present the DNA origami platform I developed for cryo-EM studies for small DNA binding proteins. Our results show that knowing a priori the protein location and orientation provided by the DNA origami structure is critical for 3D reconstruction for an 80 kDa TALE family protein. We are in the process of applying our method to determine the high-resolution structure of a 60 kDa human nuclear receptor protein with unknown structure. We are extending our method for RNA and proteins that do not bind DNA.

 

BIO: Dr. Aksel received his B.S. in Biological Sciences and Bioengineering at Sabanci University in 2006. He received his Ph.D. in Biophysics at Johns Hopkins University in 2012. After a short postdoctoral training in James Spudich’s lab at Stanford University, in 2015 he joined Shawn Douglas’ lab at UCSF for DNA nanotechnology research. He is currently building DNA nanostructures for cryo-EM studies of small proteins and developing software for biomolecule design.

Contact: Selim Balcısoy