Super cool microscopy wins the 2017 Nobel prize in chemistry: includes interview with LMB’s Richard Henderson. More…
The birth of the cool
Electron cryo-microscopy wins chemistry Nobel
Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson were awarded the prize on 4 October for their work in developing electron cryo-microscopy (cryo-EM), a technique that fires beams of electrons at proteins that have been frozen in solution, to deduce the biomolecules’ structure. More…
Richard Henderson shares 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
The Nobel prize in chemistry has been awarded to three scientists, Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and the LMB’s Richard Henderson, for developing a technique to produce images of the molecules of life frozen in time. The technique, called cryo-electron microscopy, allowed biomolecules to be visualised in their natural configuration for the first time, triggering a “revolution in biochemistry”, according to the Nobel committee. The latest versions of the technology mean scientists can record biochemical processes as they unfold in film-like sequences. More…
Leprosy turns the immune system against itself
An international team of scientists, including Lalita Ramakrishnan’s group in the University of Cambridge Molecular Immunity Unit, based at the LMB, have discovered that Leprosy hijacks our immune system, turning an important repair mechanism into one that causes potentially irreparable damage to our nerve cells. More…
Protein localization inside cells
Ramanujan Hegde talks about protein localization inside cells and quality control of this process. More…
Tau filaments from the Alzheimer’s brain revealed
Tau filaments isolated from an Alzheimer’s brain are the latest, high-profile exploit of cryo-electron microscopy. Crafting a technique that has become his claim to fame, Sjors Scheres of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, teamed up with Michel Goedert, also at MRC, to solve 3.4-Angstrom resolution structures of both straight and paired helical filaments of tau. The structures, first unveiled at the AD/PD meeting in Vienna last March, were formally published in Nature on July 5. More…