Pune’s tryst with the 2017 Nobel in electron microscopy
Very few cryo EM labs are dedicated to biological sciences in India and NIV has been the fountain head for setting up many such labs, among them being ICGEB Delhi, National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) Bengaluru and IIT Mandi. Very few cryo EM labs are dedicated to biological sciences in India and NIV has been the fountain head for setting up many such labs, among them being ICGEB Delhi, National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) Bengaluru and IIT Mandi.
Scientists in the city are excited over the Nobel Prize for Chemistry being awarded for the development of cryoelectron microscopy, as it was in Pune that the country’s first biological cryoelectron microscopy facility was developed in 2000 at the National Institute of Virology (NIV).
This year’s Nobel was shared by three electron microscopists, J Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson, for their path-breaking discovery and development of the technique of cryoelectron microscopy that enables near-atomic resolution reconstruction of frozen hydrated biological molecules like proteins and even viruses.
At NIV, the facility was set up to investigate macromolecular imaging and exploring novel areas of virus-host interactions in three dimensions that would enable researchers to explore and exploit weakness in the pathogen armour. When contacted Dr Atanu Basu, NIV scientist who is also Vice-President of the Electron Microscopy Society of India, told Pune Newsline that it was a great moment for electron microscopists in biological sciences in India, specially virologists, as it brings greater recognition to their field of work.
“This niche-speciality of the power of electron microscopy and imaging has been under exploited. At NIV, we are using this technique to its fullest to study pathogenic viruses of public health importance,” Dr Basu said. The technique of cryo electron microscopy uses rapid freezing of biomolecules like protein and DNA in a very unique form of ice called amorphous ice, which is transparent to electron imaging.
Special Transmission Electron Microscopes called Cryo TEM are then used to image such molecules and the data is collected to generate 3D models at near-atomic resolution. Researchers have imaged structures of ribosomes, bacteriophages and viruses like dengue, Basu said.
Very few cryo EM labs are dedicated to biological sciences in India and NIV has been the fountain head for setting up many such labs, among them being ICGEB Delhi, National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) Bengaluru and IIT Mandi — all centres having the fundamental base to explore multidisciplinary areas of cryo EM.
Dr Basu recently co-authored a study with NCBS scientist Dr Yamuna Krishnan and published in the journal Angew Chemie that showed for the first time how DNA cages could form as self- assembled structures.
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