[Seminar] An overview on Cryo-EM at LNNano/CNPEM Open facility and in-house research

Seminar

Title: An overview on Cryo-EM at LNNano/CNPEM Open facility and in-house research

Speaker: Rodrigo V. Portugal

Affiliation: CNPEM, Brazil

Abstract:

Single particle cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is a fundamental tool for structural molecular biology. Recent advances lead to the visualization and understanding of biological macromolecules at quasi-atomic resolution. Its achievements include solving structures of complexes of less than 100 kDa to a few MDa, at resolution up to 2Å and different conformational states. In this presentation we will discuss recent results and future applications of the new cryo-EM infrastructure at the Brazilian Nanoscience National Laboratory in the Center for Research in Energy and Materials (LNNano/CNPEM). Attention will be given to structural biology projects, including preliminary studies on membrane proteins.
This work was supported by the Ministry of Science, Innovation, Technology and Communication; CAPES and FAPESP.

Short CV

Rodrigo Portugal earned his MSc and PhD at Physics Institute at São Carlos, University of São Paulo (IFSC/USP). During his PhD and post-doc, he was trained in Cryo-EM at Marin van Heel’s group at Imperial College London, were he worked in methods development for single particle cryo-EM. He established a cryo-EM group and built a new cryo-EM facility at CNPEM, operating together with the existing material sciences EM-facility. This facility is currently the only available facility in Latin America for single particle cryo-EM. Over the last years he has been involved in numerous research projects, ranging from material sciences to structural biology.