4D electron microscopy

Moderators: Site Moderators, FAHC Science Team

Post Reply
rhavern
Posts: 425
Joined: Mon Dec 03, 2007 8:45 am
Location: UK

4D electron microscopy

Post by rhavern »

In the August 2010 issue of Scientific American http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... ible-in-4d (subscription required for full article), there is quite a bit about the ability to capture femtosecond-scale processes, such as proteins folding. Would this research be helpful in confirming or enhancing the computer models used by FAH?
Folding since 1 WU=1 point
ImageImage
tati
Posts: 21
Joined: Sat May 03, 2008 7:42 am
Hardware configuration: AMD Phenom II 940 Black Edition, 4GB RAM, Ubuntu 9.10 for SMP.
AMD Athlon XP 2400, 512MB RAM, Win XP+SP3 (and some other Intel P4-2,8 PC's for "classic" folding).
AMD Athlon64 3200 "Venice", 1GB RAM, Win XP+SP3, GeForce 9500GT for GPU and classic folding.
Location: Commuter between Herrenberg/Germany and Satu Mare/Romania

Re: 4D electron microscopy

Post by tati »

It will be a revolution in molecular research. :mrgreen:
MtM
Posts: 1579
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2008 2:20 pm
Hardware configuration: Q6600 - 8gb - p5q deluxe - gtx275 - hd4350 ( not folding ) win7 x64 - smp:4 - gpu slot
E6600 - 4gb - p5wdh deluxe - 9600gt - 9600gso - win7 x64 - smp:2 - 2 gpu slots
E2160 - 2gb - ?? - onboard gpu - win7 x32 - 2 uniprocessor slots
T5450 - 4gb - ?? - 8600M GT 512 ( DDR2 ) - win7 x64 - smp:2 - gpu slot
Location: The Netherlands
Contact:

Re: 4D electron microscopy

Post by MtM »

Idk, I would love to be able to read the entire article but I won't pay for a subscription ( and won't ask someone who has to... no I really won't ).

But this comment :
richard busch; no, because electron microscope specimens need to be dead and delicatley prepared. i would love to see it too though!
doesn't sound encouraging.

That is, if that person knows what he is talking about which I have no way of knowing for sure.

Anyone?
derrickmcc
Posts: 221
Joined: Fri Jul 24, 2009 12:30 am
Hardware configuration: 2 x GTX 460 (825/1600/1650)
AMD Athlon II X2 250 3.0Ghz
Kingston 2Gb DDR2 1066 Mhz
MSI K9A2 Platinum
Western Digital 500Gb Sata II
LiteOn DVD
Coolermaster 900W UCP
Antec 902
Windows XP SP3
Location: Malvern, UK

Re: 4D electron microscopy

Post by derrickmcc »

MtM wrote:Idk, I would love to be able to read the entire article but I won't pay for a subscription ( and won't ask someone who has to... no I really won't ).

But this comment :
richard busch; no, because electron microscope specimens need to be dead and delicatley prepared. i would love to see it too though!
doesn't sound encouraging.

That is, if that person knows what he is talking about which I have no way of knowing for sure.

Anyone?
The answer quoted above was to the question:
I'd like to see the inner workings of a living animal cell. Is this possible with the 4D electron device?
But I don't believe that a protein is a living cell, and given the reference
We have also imaged individual proteins and cells.
then I would expect there to be a possibilty of this being used to confirm some of the F@H results.
However, a problem might be the conditions in which a protein must be held for study under an electron microscope (temperature, solvent etc.)
Image
MtM
Posts: 1579
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2008 2:20 pm
Hardware configuration: Q6600 - 8gb - p5q deluxe - gtx275 - hd4350 ( not folding ) win7 x64 - smp:4 - gpu slot
E6600 - 4gb - p5wdh deluxe - 9600gt - 9600gso - win7 x64 - smp:2 - 2 gpu slots
E2160 - 2gb - ?? - onboard gpu - win7 x32 - 2 uniprocessor slots
T5450 - 4gb - ?? - 8600M GT 512 ( DDR2 ) - win7 x64 - smp:2 - gpu slot
Location: The Netherlands
Contact:

Re: 4D electron microscopy

Post by MtM »

I am under the impression, and I can off course be wrong, that f@h can not profit from it because of this:

source
“This demonstration shows that cryo-EM is doable and is a major step in reaching the full potential of this technique,” he said. “The goal is to have it reach a 3 to 4 angstrom resolution, which would allow us to clearly see the amino acids that make up a protein.”
This refers to electron cryomicroscopy, something which would allow studying proteins while being active.

The last line of the quoted article from OP is such:
We have also imaged individual proteins and cells.
To me this reads like it's a still image, and it was confirmed by that comment I linked to. If the scale can only be obtained because the specimen needs to be static ( dead ), it could not confirm anything from the research of PG.

This is way above my pay grade, I admit without hesitation, and I could very well be interpreting the limited information I have wrongly.
VijayPande
Pande Group Member
Posts: 2058
Joined: Fri Nov 30, 2007 6:25 am
Location: Stanford

Re: 4D electron microscopy

Post by VijayPande »

This is very neat research. However, it won't replace what we do (it's not high enough spatial resolution), but rather complement it, by giving us more data to test our methods against.
Prof. Vijay Pande, PhD
Departments of Chemistry, Structural Biology, and Computer Science
Chair, Biophysics
Director, Folding@home Distributed Computing Project
Stanford University
Post Reply