Cryo-ET: The secret lives of cells — as never seen before

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Dubious
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Cryo-ET: The secret lives of cells — as never seen before

#1 Post by Dubious » Tue Oct 26, 2021 6:59 pm

This interesting Nature article popped up on my Google news feed. It's about Cryo-ET, a variation on electron microscopy that has made it possible to produce detailed images of the internal structures of even bacterial cells.

The secret lives of cells — as never seen before
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02904-w

Particularly impressive is the linked "Atlas of Bacterial & Archaeal Cell Structure," which is essentially a illustrated course on cells and their architecture, divided into chapters:

"In a study of Jensen’s from 2006, for example, he and his team reported the first complete structure of the motor that drives the flagellum, a whip-like appendage in bacteria2. Using cryo-ET, they unveiled the architecture of the 20-piece motor in Treponema primitia, a bacterium found in termites’ guts, and detailed how these parts were positioned in the bacterial membrane. Jensen and his colleagues have also revealed key details of bacterial pili — protrusions that the microorganisms use for many functions, such as attaching to and secreting substances into cells they infect. Last year, his team released an open-access, digital atlas (see go.nature.com/3nugs7v) highlighting the many insights cryo-ET has revealed about bacterial and other prokaryotic cells."

Edit: the link in the paragraph above does not seem to work (the one in the full article does), so here is a link to the intro to the digital textbook:
https://jensenlab.caltech.edu/book/

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