Cryoelectron Microscopy and the 2017 Nobel Prize

The awardees of the 2017 Chemistry Nobel Prize are Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank, and Richard Henderson. The press release from the Nobel Committee describes the prize thus:

for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution.

Howard will describe the contributions of the three prize-winners, with emphasis on Professor Henderson's contributions. The accompanying figure dramatizes the improvement in resolution from cryoelectron micrographs from prior to 2013 to the present, mostly owing to improvements in detector technology. In many instances, cryoelectron microscopy can produce images from single particles of proteins, polynucleotides, or supramolecular complexes that are at near-atomic (~0.25nm) resolution. We will explore the triumphs achieved by cryoEM practitioners, the challenges facing the cryoEM community, and the role that complementary techniques, namely X-ray crystallography, solution NMR, and solid-state NMR will play in discerning structure-function relationships in the future.