#cryo-electron tomography

[bpod-bpod]

Tau Bags

Brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) bear characteristic clusters of tau protein within neurons. This study finds truncated tau filaments (shown in magenta) within and that are tethered to the membrane (yellow) of extracellular vesicles (lipid-wrapped sacs associated with cells throughout the body whose function is delivering or clearing molecules) from AD patient brains providing insights into tau's behaviour and ways to target it therapeutically

Read the published research article here

Image from work by Stephanie L. Fowler and Tiana S. Behr, and colleagues

UK Dementia Research Institute at University College London, London; Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Nature Neuroscience, November 2024

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[bpod-bpod]

ER Remake

Greater understanding of the role of autophagy – the breakdown and recycling of components – in the remodelling of the cell's endoplasmic reticulum (the protein transporting organelle) in nerve development

Read the published research article here

Image from work by Melissa J. Hoyer, Cristina Capitanio and Ian R. Smith, and colleagues

Department of Cell Biology, Harvard Medical School, Boston MA; Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP) Collaborative Research Network, Chevy Chase, MD, USA

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in bioRxiv, November 2023 (not peer reviewed)

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[earthlingdownunder]

Visualising the inside of cells

Cryo-electron tomography shows what molecules look like in high-resolution – in this case, the virus that causes COVID-19. Nanographics, CC BY-SA

Visualizing the inside of cells at previously impossible resolutions provides vivid insights into how they work

Many microscopy techniques have won Nobel Prizes over the years. Advancements like cryo-ET that allow scientists to see the individual atoms

[frontal-cortex]

Fig. 2. Visualization of a 3D reconstructed sea urchin sperm flagellum. (a and b) Surface-rendered representations of a frozen-hydrated flagellum (same as in Fig. 1) in cross section; b shows a wall-eye stereo pair of a. The structures were translationally averaged using the 96-nm basic, axial periodicity, denoised, and then thresholded to identify the surfaces for display. Colors were applied to the following structures: plasma membrane (brown), microtubules (gray), ODAs and IDAs (red), radial spokes (orange), central pair protrusions (yellow), and bipartite bridges (pink). 1, 5, and 6 mark MTDs 1, 5, and 6. (Scale bar: 40 nm.)

Daniela Nicastro et al. 3D structure of eukaryotic flagella in a quiescent state revealed by cryo-electron tomography. PNAS vol. 102 no. 44