Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Visualizing everything, everywhere, all at once: Cryo-EM and the new field of structureomics

2023; Elsevier BV; Volume: 81; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.sbi.2023.102620

1879-033X

Bronwyn A. Lucas,

Microbial Natural Products and Biosynthesis

Twenty years ago, the release of the first draft of the human genome sequence instigated a paradigm shift in genomics and molecular biology. Arguably, structural biology is entering an analogous era, with availability of an experimentally determined or predicted molecular model for almost every protein-coding gene from many genomes—producing a reference "structureome". Structural predictions require experimental validation and not all proteins conform to a single structure, making any reference structureome necessarily incomplete. Despite these limitations, a reference structureome can be used to characterize cell state in more detail than by quantifying sequence or expression levels alone. Cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is a method that can generate atomic resolution views of molecules and cells frozen in place. In this perspective I consider how emerging cryo-EM methods are contributing to the new field of structureomics.