Science at the Edge

11:30

BPS 1400

Amit Singer

Title: Mathematics for Cryo-Electron Microscopy

Abstract:

Single particle cryo-EM recently joined X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy as a high-resolution structural method for biological macromolecules (the 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry). Furthermore, cryo-EM has the potential to analyze compositionally and conformationally heterogeneous mixtures and, consequently, can be used to determine the structures of complexes in different functional states. The 3D-structure and the possible structural variability need to be determined from many noisy two-dimensional tomographic projections, whose viewing directions and in-plane rotations are unknown. In this lecture, the speaker will give an overview of the computational challenges in cryo-EM analysis and how he and others are trying to face them, focusing on 3D ab-initio modelling and the heterogeneity problem of determining structural variability.

Lerena R. Heintzelman

Department of Physics & Astronomy

Michigan State University

567 Wilson Rd. Room 3261

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-884-5513