• 文献标题:   Bioactive Functionalized Monolayer Graphene for High-Resolution Cryo-Electron Microscopy
  • 文献类型:   Article
  • 作  者:   LIU N, ZHANG JC, CHEN YA, LIU C, ZHANG X, XU K, WEN J, LUO ZP, CHEN SL, GAO P, JIA KC, LIU ZF, PENG HL, WANG HW
  • 作者关键词:  
  • 出版物名称:   JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY
  • ISSN:   0002-7863
  • 通讯作者地址:   Tsinghua Univ
  • 被引频次:   17
  • DOI:   10.1021/jacs.8b13038
  • 出版年:   2019

▎ 摘  要

Single-particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) has become one of the most essential tools to understand biological mechanisms at molecular level. A major bottleneck in cryo-EM technique is the preparation of good specimens that embed biological macromolecules in a thin layer of vitreous ice. In the canonical cryo-EM specimen preparation method, biological macromolecules tend to be adsorbed to the air-water interface, causing partial denaturation and/or preferential orientations. In this work, we have designed and produced a new type of cryo-EM grids using bioactive-ligand functionalized single-crystalline monolayer graphene membranes as supporting films. The functionalized graphene membrane (FGM) grids exhibit specific binding affinity to histidine (His)-tagged proteins and complexes. In cryo-EM, the FGM grids generate relatively low background for imaging and selectively anchor 20S proteasomes to the supporting film surface, enabling near- atomic-resolution 3D reconstruction of the complex. We envision that the FGM grids could benefit single particle cryo-EM specimen preparation with high reproducibility and robustness, therefore enhancing the efficiency and throughput of high-resolution cryo-EM structural determination.