ALBERT

Description: A new method to estimate the trajectories of particle motion and the amount of cumulative beam damage in electron cryo-microscopy (cryo-EM) single-particle analysis is presented. The motion within the sample is modelled through the use of Gaussian process regression. This allows a prior likelihood that favours spatially and temporally smooth motion to be associated with each hypothetical set of particle trajectories without imposing hard constraints. This formulation enables the a posteriori likelihood of a set of particle trajectories to be expressed as a product of that prior likelihood and an observation likelihood given by the data, and this a posteriori likelihood to then be maximized. Since the smoothness prior requires three parameters that describe the statistics of the observed motion, an efficient stochastic method to estimate these parameters is also proposed. Finally, a practical algorithm is proposed that estimates the average amount of cumulative radiation damage as a function of radiation dose and spatial frequency, and then fits relative B factors to that damage in a robust way. The method is evaluated on three publicly available data sets, and its usefulness is illustrated by comparison with state-of-the-art methods and previously published results. The new method has been implemented as Bayesian polishing in RELION-3, where it replaces the existing particle-polishing method, as it outperforms the latter in all tests conducted.

Description: The Arenaviridae family, together with the Bunyaviridae and Orthomyxoviridae families, is one of the three negative-stranded RNA viral families that encode an endonuclease in their genome. The endonuclease domain is at the N-terminus of the L protein, a multifunctional protein that includes the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase. The synthesis of mRNA in arenaviruses is a process that is primed by capped nucleotides that are `stolen' from the cellular mRNA by the endonuclease domain in cooperation with other domains of the L protein. This molecular mechanism has been demonstrated previously for the endonuclease of the prototype Lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV). However, the mode of action of this enzyme is not fully understood as the original structure did not contain catalytic metal ions. The pivotal role played by the cap-snatching process in the life cycle of the virus and the highly conserved nature of the endonuclease domain make it a target of choice for the development of novel antiviral therapies. Here, the binding affinities of two diketo-acid (DKA) compounds (DPBA and L-742,001) for the endonuclease domain of LCMV were evaluated using biophysical methods. X-ray structures of the LCMV endonuclease domain with catalytic ions in complex with these two compounds were determined, and their efficacies were assessed in an in vitro endonuclease-activity assay. Based on these data and computational simulation, two new DKAs were synthesized. The LCMV endonuclease domain exhibits a good affinity for these DKAs, making them a good starting point for the design of arenavirus endonuclease inhibitors. In addition to providing the first example of an X-ray structure of an arenavirus endonuclease incorporating a ligand, this study provides a proof of concept that the design of optimized inhibitors against the arenavirus endonuclease is possible.

Description: Classical structural biology approaches allow structural characterization of biological macromolecules in vitro, far from their physiological context. Nowadays, thanks to the wealth of structural data available and to technological and methodological advances, the interest of the research community is gradually shifting from pure structural determination towards the study of functional aspects of biomolecules. Therefore, a cellular structural approach is ideally needed to characterize biological molecules, such as proteins, in their native cellular environment and the functional processes that they are involved in. In-cell NMR is a new application of high-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy that allows structural and dynamical features of proteins and other macromolecules to be analyzed directly in living cells. Owing to its challenging nature, this methodology has shown slow, but steady, development over the past 15 years. To date, several in-cell NMR approaches have been successfully applied to both bacterial and eukaryotic cells, including several human cell lines, and important structural and functional aspects have been elucidated. In this topical review, the major advances of in-cell NMR are summarized, with a special focus on recent developments in eukaryotic and mammalian cells.