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Cryogenic electron microscopy represents a revolutionary improvement in our ability to see biological molecules. Since its early development in the 70s it has become an important tool for understanding life at the tiniest scales.
Summary
New cryo-electron microscopy images suggest archaeal microbes pack their chromatin into tight coils that can spring open, forming unexpected contortions.
Archaeal DNA forms coils that can flop apart in solution, new cryo-electron microscopy experiments reveal. Credit: S. Bowerman et al./
eLife 2021
In some single-celled organisms, DNA coils like a spring and opens like a book.
eLife. “Very much to our surprise, we found that these structures can undergo all sorts of gymnastics,” says Luger, a biochemist at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Like DNA in the nucleus of human cells, archaeal DNA coils around proteins like string wrapped around a yo-yo. But there’s another twist, the team found. Those coils of DNA can also spread 90 degrees apart – a phenomenon scientists hadn’t seen before. Such bends in the springlike structures could potentially let archaeal proteins sidle up to the DNA and switch genes on and off, Luger suggests. (Scientists don’t currentl