Title: Cryo-EM and Liquid-EM for Imaging Biological Systems
Name: Jungwon Park1
Affiliations: 1School of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea
Abstract:
Direct observations of molecular structures and structural changes of various biological materials at the spatial resolution of nanoscale or below are challenging, mainly because of the lack of appropriate analytical methods for such a small length scale along with sub-msec temporal resolution. For the liquid phase and the frozen state, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) offers an opportunity to directly observe diverse classes of biological systems in their native aqueous state.
The seminar discusses technical development for high-throughput imaging based on cryo-EM and liquid-EM. We present the application of cryo- and liquid-TEM to study structures, crystallizations, and structural transitions of various soft materials, including polymers, proteins, exosomes, and viruses. We achieve high-resolution tracking of polymer chains in graphene liquid cell TEM and also develop microfabricated multi-well type devices that facilitate the formation of vitrified biological samples with a uniform thickness, leading to reliable high-resolution cryo-TEM imaging of diverse proteins, viruses, and filament structures. A general cryo-TEM strategy for studying tissue structures in high-resolution is also discussed.
