Computational Foundations for High-Resolution Cryo-EM

Speaker: Alberto Bartesaghi
Date: Thursday, February 2, 2017
Time: 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Location: Learning Hall, Trent Semans Center for Health Education
For Duke Faculty, Staff, Postdocs, and Students only.

Improvements in detector technology and computational techniques have transformed Cryo-EM into a powerful strategy for structure determination that can be used to study a broad spectrum of biological targets, with resolutions in some cases that are high enough to be relevant for facilitating drug discovery. In particular, the ability to sort out structural heterogeneity combined with the capability of direct electron detectors to operate in movie mode, has provided unique opportunities for the development of effective algorithmic strategies capable of teasing out high-resolution information from noisy frame sequences. I will give an overview of recent technical achievements in the field that have allowed the structural characterization of small and dynamic protein complexes involved in signaling and metabolism, and highlight some of the remaining technological barriers and challenges in statistical image analysis that would need to be addressed in order to further advance Cryo-EM frontiers.