First complete 3D visualization of vitamin D receptor

URL

http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=24058.php

Description

To meet this challenge, which has called upon the resources of many researchers around the world for more than 15 years, the teams led by Bruno Klaholz and Dino Moras, both CNRS senior researchers at IGBMC, resorted to an innovative technique: cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), which requires a next-generation "high-resolution" electron microscope. This technological marvel makes it possible to observe biological objects at the molecular and even atomic scale. In France, the first such EM was installed at IGBMC in 2008. Before this work was carried out, it was widely assumed that studying VDR with cryo-EM was impossible. In fact, until now, the smallest molecules observed using this technique weighed more than 300 kilodaltons (kDa), or even several thousand kDa, in other words much more than the VDR, which weighs 100 kDa and measures a mere 10 nm.