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Cryo-electron Microscopy Wins Chemistry Nobel

October 4, 2017

Three pioneers in cryo-EM, Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson, have been awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work developing this revolutionary structural biology technique.

Above: Metabolic enzyme beta-galactosidase, at approximately 2.2 Å resolution determined by cryo-EM.

Dr. Henderson's work on determining the three-dimensional structure of bacteriorhodopsin in the 1970s, together with Dr. Frank's advancements in image processing techniques and Dr. Dubochet's methods for rapidly freezing biomolecules to prevent them from electron damage while being imaged in a transmission electron microscope, set the groundwork for the recent "resolution revolution" in cryo-EM. To learn more, check out this Nature News article.