Instruct-ERIC is an initiative offering the possibility of free access to Sample Preparation for structural biology studies, Biomolecular Analysis and actual 3D Structural Analysis in facilities in nine European countries. NeCEN is one of the facilities in the Netherlands that is accessible via Instruct-ERIC.
The third webinar in the Instruct-ERIC series 'Structure meets function' will take place on 13 October 2020 at 11:00-12:30 CEST. It is now possible to register.
On 28 July it was announced that Ariane Briegel, Professor of Ultrastructural biology and NeCEN co-director, will receive a 800,000 euro grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
On 6 August 2020 Science published an article on the coronavirus replication organelle. Research was conducted by the Leiden University Medical Center in collaboration with the University of California San Francisco, Leibnitz Institute of Experimental Virology and the University of Hamburg. The EM tomography data of MHV-infected samples were collected at NeCEN.
After technical maintenance and upgrading, both our Titan Krios miscroscopes are now fully operational. Krios 1 has been fitted with a Gatan K3 bioquantum detector. Krios 2 has been fitted with a Gatan K2 bioquantum detector (and still has Falcon3 detector available).
On July 10 a preprint was released on stabilizing the trimeric spike protein of Sars-CoV-2. This protein constitutes the main focus of most vaccine development efforts. The research for this article was a collaboration between Janssen Vaccines & Prevention BV and NeCEN.
Dr. Sriram Subramaniam (University of British Columbia) recently published a short article on the growth of Cryo-EM, the power of Cryo-EM in the field of structural biology and the important role it serves in SARS-CoV-2 related research.
On June 25 a preprint article has been released on coronavirus replication. Using cryo electron microscopy a molecular pore complex was unveiled which would allow export of RNA to the cytosol. A hexameric assembly of a large viral transmembrane protein was found to form the core of the crown-shaped complex. This coronavirus-specific structure likely plays a critical role in coronavirus replication and thus constitutes a novel drug target.