IPET and FETR: experimental approach for studying molecular structure dynamics by cryo-electron tomography of a single-molecule structure

PLoS One. 2012;7(1):e30249. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0030249. Epub 2012 Jan 24.

Abstract

The dynamic personalities and structural heterogeneity of proteins are essential for proper functioning. Structural determination of dynamic/heterogeneous proteins is limited by conventional approaches of X-ray and electron microscopy (EM) of single-particle reconstruction that require an average from thousands to millions different molecules. Cryo-electron tomography (cryoET) is an approach to determine three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction of a single and unique biological object such as bacteria and cells, by imaging the object from a series of tilting angles. However, cconventional reconstruction methods use large-size whole-micrographs that are limited by reconstruction resolution (lower than 20 Å), especially for small and low-symmetric molecule (<400 kDa). In this study, we demonstrated the adverse effects from image distortion and the measuring tilt-errors (including tilt-axis and tilt-angle errors) both play a major role in limiting the reconstruction resolution. Therefore, we developed a "focused electron tomography reconstruction" (FETR) algorithm to improve the resolution by decreasing the reconstructing image size so that it contains only a single-instance protein. FETR can tolerate certain levels of image-distortion and measuring tilt-errors, and can also precisely determine the translational parameters via an iterative refinement process that contains a series of automatically generated dynamic filters and masks. To describe this method, a set of simulated cryoET images was employed; to validate this approach, the real experimental images from negative-staining and cryoET were used. Since this approach can obtain the structure of a single-instance molecule/particle, we named it individual-particle electron tomography (IPET) as a new robust strategy/approach that does not require a pre-given initial model, class averaging of multiple molecules or an extended ordered lattice, but can tolerate small tilt-errors for high-resolution single "snapshot" molecule structure determination. Thus, FETR/IPET provides a completely new opportunity for a single-molecule structure determination, and could be used to study the dynamic character and equilibrium fluctuation of macromolecules.

Publication types

  • Evaluation Study
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
  • Validation Study

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Computer Simulation
  • Cryoelectron Microscopy / methods*
  • Crystallography, X-Ray
  • Electron Microscope Tomography / methods*
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / methods*
  • Imaging, Three-Dimensional / methods
  • Macromolecular Substances / analysis
  • Macromolecular Substances / chemistry
  • Models, Molecular
  • Molecular Dynamics Simulation*
  • Molecular Structure*
  • Protein Structure, Quaternary
  • Protein Structure, Secondary

Substances

  • Macromolecular Substances