Putting structure into context: fitting of atomic models into electron microscopic and electron tomographic reconstructions.

Lien vers Pubmed [PMID] – 22152946

Lien DOI – 10.1016/j.ceb.2011.11.002

Curr Opin Cell Biol 2012 Feb; 24(1): 141-7

A complete understanding of complex dynamic cellular processes such as cell migration or cell adhesion requires the integration of atomic level structural information into the larger cellular context. While direct atomic-level information at the cellular level remains inaccessible, electron microscopy, electron tomography and their associated computational image processing approaches have now matured to a point where sub-cellular structures can be imaged in three dimensions at the nanometer scale. Atomic-resolution information obtained by other means can be combined with this data to obtain three-dimensional models of large macromolecular assemblies in their cellular context. This article summarizes some recent advances in this field.