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Zheng et al. Self-assembled superstructure alleviates air-water interface effect in cryo-EM. Nature Communications, August 24, 2024 Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) has been widely used to reveal the structures of proteins at atomic resolution. One key challenge is that almost all proteins … Continue reading →

Yang et al. Electrospray-assisted cryo-EM sample preparation to mitigate interfacial effects. Nature Methods, June, 2024 Addressing interfacial effects during specimen preparation in cryogenic electron microscopy remains challenging. Here we introduce ESI-cryoPrep, a specimen preparation method based on electrospray ionization in … Continue reading →

Xu et al. Graphene sandwich-based biological specimen preparation for cryo-EM analysis. PNAS, January 30, 2024 High-quality specimen preparation plays a crucial role in cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) structural analysis. In this study, we have developed a reliable and convenient technique called … Continue reading →

Zhou et al. Structural insights into the mechanism of GTP initiation of microtubule assembly. Nature Communications, September 25, 2023 In eukaryotes, the dynamic assembly of microtubules (MT) plays an important role in numerous cellular processes. The underlying mechanism of GTP … Continue reading →

You et al. In situ structure of the red algal phycobilisome-PSII-PSI-LHC megacomplex. Nature, April, 2023 In oxygenic photosynthetic organisms, light energy is captured by antenna systems and transferred to photosystem II (PSII) and photosystem I (PSI) to drive photosynthesis1,2. The … Continue reading →

Zheng et al. Uniform thin ice on ultraflat graphene for high-resolution cryo-EM. Nature Methods, January, 2023 Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) visualizes the atomic structure of macromolecules that are embedded in vitrified thin ice at their close-to-native state. However, the homogeneity of ice thickness, … Continue reading →

Lu et al. Functionalized graphene grids with various charges for single-particle cryo-EM, Nature Communications, November 7, 2022 A major hurdle for single particle cryo-EM in structural determination lies in the specimen preparation impaired by the air-water interface (AWI) and preferential particle-orientation problems. … Continue reading →

Su et al. Structural insights into dsRNA processing by Drosophila Dicer-2-Loqs-PD, Nature, July, 2022 Small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) are the key components for RNA interference (RNAi), a conserved RNA-silencing mechanism in many eukaryotes1,2. In Drosophila, an RNase III enzyme Dicer-2 (Dcr-2), aided … Continue reading →

Xu et al. Structural engineering of graphene for high-resolution cryo-electron microscopy, SmartMat., May 26, 2021 The revolutionary improvement of hardware and algorithm in cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo‐EM) has made it a routine method to obtain structures of macromolecules at near‐atomic … Continue reading →

Niu et al. Molecular basis of cross-species ACE2 interactions with SARS-CoV-2-like viruses of pangolin origin, EMBO J.，June, 2021 Pangolins have been suggested as potential reservoir of zoonotic viruses, including SARS-CoV-2 causing the global COVID-19 outbreak. Here, we study the binding … Continue reading →