Cryo-electron microscopy focuses the scattered electron wave function into an image. Beam damage limits the signal-to-noise ratio of these electron images.
The Abrahams group (with dual locations at the Biozentrum and the Paul Scherrer Institute) showed that the signal-to-noise ratio can be boosted significantly by directly measuring the scattered electrons in diffraction mode. This resulted a.o. in the development of protein nano-crystallography (micro-ED) and we are extending the method to include non-crystalline samples and single molecule electron diffraction (simED). Our group is installing novel, dedicated hardware at the Paul Scherrer Institute for quickly generating high-quality electron (nano-)diffraction data at a rate of up to 6 Gb/s. The goals of the project include optimizing data collection strategies and developing novel phase retrieval algorithms based on molecular replacement, image processing and artificial intelligence for interpreting these data. An important biological focus of our group is on molecular machines for protein degradation (I. Mohammed, K. A. Schmitz, N. Schenck, T. Maier, J. P. Abrahams, Catalytic cycling of human mitochondrial Lon protease. Sci. Adv. 7, eabf0156 (2021)).
Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Marie Curie EU Innovative Training Network ‘nanED’, one postdoc position and 4 PhD positions are available for conducting research in electron (nano)diffraction of biological samples at the Biozentrum and the Paul Scherrer Institute.
For details, please visit the vacancies website of the Biozentrum.
Application deadline 31 May 2021
