Date Time
Structural biology at EMBL: driving technology development
Florent Cipriani, who recently retired as Head of the Instrumentation Team after a long career at EMBL Grenoble, is one of the pioneers of instrumentation development in this field, creating ingenious inventions with worldwide impact. First member of the MD3 diffractometer family installed at EMBL Hamburg. Credits: Kinga Lubowiecka/EMBL
Scientific breakthroughs are often only made possible by innovative technological developments. This is certainly true in structural biology, where researchers seek to gain insight into biological processes by determining the structure of macromolecules at the atomic level, for instance by X-ray crystallography or cryo-electron microscopy. Florent Cipriani, who recently retired as Head of the Instrumentation Team after a long career at EMBL Grenoble, is one of the pioneers of instrumentation development in this field, creating ingenious inventions with worldwide impact.
Author: Royal Microscopical Society on behalf of Royal Microscopical Society
Free to read
Unlock
The RMS is delighted to be assisting in the organisation of the European Light Microscopy Initiative (elmi) 2021 – taking place virtually from 22 – 25 June.
The online format will deliver a unique blend of features, in-keeping with the traditions of this popular event, with this year’s scientific programme focusing on leading edge developments and their implementation to life science.
An exciting and diverse range of conference sessions has now been confirmed for elmi2021. Correlated Multimodal Imaging across the scales (Session Chair: Julia Fernandez-Rodriguez)
• Image Data Analysis and Management (Session Chair: Sian Culley)
Tapeworm infection drug blocks SARS-CoV-2 damage in the lungs
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection induces various health complications all over the body. New research published in the journal
Nature found the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in the lungs resulted in abnormal pneumocytes and spike protein-mediated cell fusion. Their findings also showed that TMEM16F protein activation induces cell fusion. Therefore, drugs inhibiting the TMEM16F/Anoctamin6 calcium-activated ion channel, such as niclosamide - a medication used to treat tapeworm infestations - could serve as potential treatments for reducing the severity of COVID-19 infection.
The researchers write:
“Niclosamide has already been reported to be active against various enveloped and non enveloped viruses, including SARS-CoV-2. Although this drug has relatively low solubility, there is evidence of considerable absorption, with serum levels that can reach 1-20 µM. Together, our findings prov
Researchers provide ultrastructural details of SARS-CoV-2-infected respiratory epithelial cells
A team of scientists from the United Kingdom recently investigated the ultrastructural details of the attachment, entry, and budding processes of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in the human airway epithelium. They have used a highly differentiated air-liquid interface cultures of airway epithelium to thoroughly investigate the viral infection cycle. The study is currently available on the
Background
SARS-CoV-2, the causative pathogen of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), is an enveloped RNA virus belonging to the Coronaviridae family. The virus primarily attacks human airway epithelial cells to initiate infection. Mechanistically, the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the S1 subunit of the viral spike glycoprotein binds to angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), which is ubiquitously expressed at the apical surface of host airway epithelial cells. This is