Forum 08/10/2006

“Automatic Structure Elucidations of Large Bio-molecular Complexes”

Zeyun Yu, Research Assistant – Department of Computer Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin

Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), coupled with digital image processing, has become a powerful technique to reveal 3D structures of large bio-molecular complexes (LBC), at medium (10-20Å) or even sub-nanometer resolutions. While numerous LBC structures have been solved, little effort has been made towards automatic and quantitative interpretations of the reconstructed 3D maps.

In this talk, I will present a number of algorithms for automatic structure analysis of reconstructed 3D cryo-EM maps. The major steps include symmetry detection, subunit segmentation, secondary structure identification, and quasi-atomic structure modeling/fitting.