| Literature DB >> 30541924 |
Xiunan Yi1,2,3, Eric J Verbeke1,2,3, Yiran Chang1,2,3, Daniel J Dickinson4,2,3, David W Taylor5,2,3,6.
Abstract
Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) has become an indispensable tool for structural studies of biological macromolecules. Two additional predominant methods are available for studying the architectures of multiprotein complexes: 1) single-particle analysis of purified samples and 2) tomography of whole cells or cell sections. The former can produce high-resolution structures but is limited to highly purified samples, whereas the latter can capture proteins in their native state but has a low signal-to-noise ratio and yields lower-resolution structures. Here, we present a simple, adaptable method combining microfluidic single-cell extraction with single-particle analysis by EM to characterize protein complexes from individual Caenorhabditis elegans embryos. Using this approach, we uncover 3D structures of ribosomes directly from single embryo extracts. Moreover, we investigated structural dynamics during development by counting the number of ribosomes per polysome in early and late embryos. This approach has significant potential applications for counting protein complexes and studying protein architectures from single cells in developmental, evolutionary, and disease contexts.Entities:
Keywords: Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans); cryo-electron microscopy; proteasome; ribosome; single-particle analysis
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Year: 2018 PMID: 30541924 PMCID: PMC6364765 DOI: 10.1074/jbc.RA118.006686
Source DB: PubMed Journal: J Biol Chem ISSN: 0021-9258 Impact factor: 5.157
Figure 1.Schematic of single-cell structural biology approach. Single C. elegans embryos are trapped in a microfluidic device. After the embryo is crushed, the lysate is extracted using a fine needle and applied to a specific area of an EM grid using a stereoscope. The same area is then visualized using EM, and single-particle analysis is applied for structure determination.
Figure 2.Single-particle analysis of extracts from single cells. A, representative raw electron micrograph of negatively stained single-cell lysates. Micrographs show monodisperse particles of varying size. Circled particles are representative of the larger particles (∼150–300 Å in diameter) used for subsequent 2D and 3D classification. B, top panel, reference-free 2D alignment and classification of a subset of the ∼50,000 particles picked from single-cell extract. Classes are sorted in order of decreasing abundance. Box size is 576 × 576 Å. Bottom panel, alignment of 2D class averages from single-cell extract to purified homologs.
Figure 3.Counting ribosomes in polysomes from early- and late-stage A, representative raw electron micrograph of negatively stained single-cell lysate showing several distinct polysome clusters of varying size (yellow circles). B, distribution of the number of ribosomes in a polysome across three early- and three late-stage embryos. The average numbers of ribosomes for early- and late-stage embryos are eight and seven, respectively. The red cross-hair is the mean value, and the green box is the median (n = 81, 513, 319, 31, 71, and 52 for embryos 1–6, respectively).
Figure 4.40S and 60S ribosome reconstructions from particles from single cells. Top row, 60S ribosome reconstruction. High-resolution structure EMDB-2811 (25) docked into our 60S map with a cross-correlation score of 0.8142. Middle row, 40S ribosome reconstruction. High-resolution structure EMDB-4214 (26) docked in to our 40S map with a cross-correlation score of 0.8352. Bottom row, 80S ribosome hybrid model built using our 40S and 60S ribosome aligned to a high-resolution structure of the 80S ribosome EMDB-2858 (27).