Li Sai of the School of Life Sciences was invited to publish a research review on cryo-ET to analyze the structure of enveloped viruses on TiBS

There are many types of enveloped viruses, many of which are notorious, such as Ebola, HIV, influenza, and SARS-CoV-2 virus

On September 10, 2021, Associate Professor Li Sai, School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University, was invited to publish the title " Cryo-electron tomography in the study of enveloped viruses" in the special issue of the internationally renowned academic journal Trends in Biochemical Sciences .

Figure 1: Structures of various enveloped viruses analyzed by cryo-ET and STA (left); and structures of various non-enveloped viruses analyzed by cryo-EM and single particles (right, T.

The booming cryo-ET technology and in situ structural biology

The goal of in-situ structural biology is to directly analyze the super-large protein machine from the biomembrane, virus, cell, and even tissue environment to obtain its in vivo structure, interaction with nucleic acid/biomembrane, and distribution information

Compared with the traditional cryo-electron microscopy method, the raw data of cryo-ET adds accurate Z-axis information, so the sample purity and assembly stringency requirements are lower, and there is no need to separate the original environment during the sample preparation process, and the obtained structure More physiological meaning

Figure 2: Comparison of structural biology and microscopy

Cryo-ET analysis of the high-resolution structure of protein complexes requires the collection of photos containing tens of thousands of target complexes.

Cryo-ET is a powerful tool to reveal the structure of enveloped viruses and the process of membrane fusion

In the review, Li Sai systematically explained how cryo-ET and STA can be used as powerful tools for enveloped virus research

At the same time, the article fully summarizes how cryo-ET technology contributes to the study of in vitro simulated membrane fusion and the conformational changes of glycoproteins during the fusion process

Figure 3: In situ structure of various envelope virus spike proteins analyzed by cryo-ET and STA

Cryo-ET turns the life activity of the virus in diseased cells from a pathway diagram into a real structure

Studying the life cycle of viruses: invasion, genome release, replication, assembly, release, etc.

Outlook

The review not only carefully sorts out the structural research of enveloped viruses, but also summarizes the endless new technologies of molecular and cellular cryo-ET technology in sample preparation, labeling, data collection and processing

Figure 4: Li Sai and his team's scientific research process on cryo-ET and STA technology

Associate Professor Li Sai, School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University, Advanced Innovation Center for Structural Biology, Tsinghua-Peking University Joint Center for Life Sciences, and Tsinghua University Future Vaccine Center, are the authors of this review.

Original link:

https://

About the Author

Li Sai, associate professor, doctoral supervisor
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Graduated from Wuhan University in 2006; obtained a PhD in Science from the University of Göttingen, Germany in 2012; from 2012 to 2018, worked as a postdoctoral fellow and associate researcher at the University of Oxford, UK; and established a laboratory at Tsinghua University in 2018
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Laboratory website:

In the past 9 years, Li Sai has used high-resolution cryo-electron microscopy tomography as the main research method to carry out research on the structure and assembly mechanism of a variety of dynamically assembled super-large molecular machines
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A total of 26 papers were published, and 10 papers were published in correspondence and the first author
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The main work includes: 1) The development of high-throughput, high-resolution cryo-ET technology, which can be routinely obtained with a resolution better than 9? In situ structure and assembly, the representative work is the complete virus molecular structure of the new coronavirus, published in "Cell"
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The results on Lassa, Rift Valley Fever, Hanta, and influenza viruses have been published in journals such as Nature Communications, Cell Reports, Public Science Library Pathogens, etc.
; 3) Use cryo-ET to remove nuclear pores The local resolution of the in-situ structure of the complex was advanced to 9°, and a new structure of the lumen ring was discovered, which was published in Cell Research
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The above results have been recommended by F1000 many times or have become ESI highly cited papers, and have been selected as the "Top Ten Scientific and Technological Progress in Chinese Higher Education Institutions in 2020" by the Ministry of Education, and the "First Prize of Scientific and Technological Progress in 2020" in Zhejiang Province
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He has won awards such as "Outstanding Young Scholars of the Chinese Society of Electron Microscopy" and was invited to give an opening special lecture at the 2021 GRC 3DEM International Cryo-electron Microscopy Conference
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