Yanan Chen's Lab
Selected Publications
Cryo-Electron Microscopy
Single-particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM)
has become one of the most essential tools to understand biological
mechanisms at molecular level. A major bottleneck in cryo-EM
technique is the preparation of good specimens that embed biological
macromolecules in a thin layer of vitreous ice. In the canonical cryoEM
specimen preparation method, biological macromolecules tend to
be adsorbed to the air−water interface, causing partial denaturation
and/or preferential orientations. In this work, we have designed and
produced a new type of cryo-EM grids using bioactive-ligand
functionalized single-crystalline monolayer graphene membranes as
supporting films. The functionalized graphene membrane (FGM)
grids exhibit specific binding affinity to histidine (His)-tagged proteins and complexes. In cryo-EM, the FGM grids generate
relatively low background for imaging and selectively anchor 20S proteasomes to the supporting film surface, enabling nearatomic-resolution
3D reconstruction of the complex. We envision that the FGM grids could benefit single particle cryo-EM
specimen preparation with high reproducibility and robustness, therefore enhancing the efficiency and throughput of highresolution
cryo-EM structural determination.