The LMB was delighted to welcome a team from Leeds to visit recently as they cycled around the UK on a charity microscope tour to raise £20k for International Justice Mission, a charity tackling modern slavery. This image for day 124 of #LMB365 was taken after their refreshment stop at the LMB where they were hosted by the LMB EM facility, Lori Passmore, Sjors Scheres and Wanda Kukulski.
Image365
LMB 365 – Day 123
The image for day 123 of #LMB365 shows the Ty3 retrotransposon capsid. Like retroviruses, Ty3 builds a capsid, replicates its nucleic acid, and inserts itself into new positions in the genome, but unlike a virus it never leaves the yeast cells in which it is found. Ty3 and the human virus HIV-1 diverged from a common ancestor that existed before the divergence of plants and animals 1.5 billion years ago. Surprisingly, Ty3 is also similar to a neuronal protein called Arc1. John Briggs’ group in the Structural Studies Division collaborated with the Sandmeyer lab who discovered Ty3 in the 1980’s, to determine the structure of the Ty3 capsid using cryo-electron microscopy and found that it has many similarities to the capsid of HIV-1. https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/04/26/1900931116
LMB 365 – Day 122
On this day in 1970, a landmark paper showing the 3D reconstructions of spherical viruses was published. On day 122 of #LMB365, an electron micrograph of human wart virus is shown, alongside a version with its surface lattice superimposed on top. Aaron Klug led a group of LMB scientists applying the technique he had developed just a few years early, of computing 3D density maps from electron micrographs, to spherical viruses. The tecnique produced clear reconstructions of the surface structures of viruses, and paved the way for 3D imaging by electron microscopy. Reference: R. A. Crowther, Linda A. Amos, J T. Finch, D J DeRosier, A. Klug. Nature 226: 421-425.
LMB 365 – Day 121
On day 121 of #LMB365 we have a 1970s image of the nematode worm, C. elegans, to highlight Sydney Brenner’s landmark paper on the genetics of Caenorhabditis elegans which was published in May 1974: Genetics 77: 71-94. “The ease of handling of the nematode coupled with its small genome size suggests that it is feasible to look for mutants in all of the genes to try to discover how they participate in the development and functioning of a simple multicellular organism.” For this work, Sydney shared the 2002 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine
LMB 365 – Day 120
On day 120 of #LMB365 we find some LMB PhD students “relaxing” by bouldering at a local climbing centre after a long day in the lab. Abilities varied, but they all enjoyed themselves and ended up with a well-deserved pint in a local pub.
LMB 365 – Day 119
Day 119 of #LMB365 shows blue, yellow-green, and red lasers hitting the sample stream in the MoFlo cell sorter within the Flow Cytometry facility. As cells flow through the laser beams at this interrogation point their fluorescence is measured and the cells are sorted accordingly. This technique is used by many people across the LMB to select cells of interest for further study.