JOURNAL OF BIOMOLECULAR STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS 2019, VOL. 37, NO. S1, 1–92 https://doi.org/10.1080/07391102.2019.1604468 Book of Abstracts. Albany 2019: The 20th Conversation Abstracts 1. The structure and dynamics of 2. Cryo-EM and drug discovery biomolecules in their native states Sriram Subramaniam Joachim Frank Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, 2215 Wesbrook Mall, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, Columbia University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z3, Canada University, New York, NY 10032, USA
[email protected] [email protected] Cryo-EM has transitioned rapidly in the last few years from being The aim of structural biology is to explain life processes in amethodthatwasonlycapableofhandlingasmallsubsetof terms of macromolecular interactions in the cell. These inter- cryo-EM worthy specimens, to one that is useful for analysis of a actions typically involve more than two partners, and can very large spectrum of protein complexes (Subramaniam, 2019). run up to dozens. A full description will need to characterize This transition of cryo-EM from being a technology that was billed all structures on the atomic level, and the way these struc- as a tool to analyze large and/or highly symmetric specimens, to tures change in the process. Because of the crowded envir- one that can successfully tackle a range of proteins and protein onment of the cell, such characterization is presently (but complexes of broad general interest has been transformative. The see below) only possible when the group of interacting mol- structures of an impressive number of proteins, small and large, ecules (often organized into processive ‘molecular machines’) sometimes with extensive conformational spread, have been suc- is isolated and studied in vitro.