生物大分子冷冻电镜结构解析技术研究进展：2017年诺贝尔化学奖解读

Progress in biomolecular cryo-electron microscopy

生物大分子的结构研究是从原子分子水平上阐述生命过程的规律、探索重大疾病发生发展机制和高靶向性药物研发的关键.解析生物大分子三维结构的主要技术有X射线晶体学(X-ray)、核磁共振(NMR)和冷冻电镜(Cryo-EM).近年来,冷冻电镜技术发展迅速,其分辨率可以达到原子水平(约3?,在超大复合物结构解析方面优势明显.2017年三位科学家因发展了冷冻电镜解析生物大分子三维结构的方法获得诺贝尔化学奖.本文简要评析了此次诺贝尔化学奖获奖工作的科学背景及应用前景.

Biomolecular structure is the basis of discovering life procedure on atom level, exploring disease mechanism, and developing targeting drugs. The main techniques to resolve biomolecular structure are X-ray crystallography, NMR spectroscopy, and cryo-electron microscopy （Cryo-EM）. Recently, there was dramatical progress in Cryo-EM, the resolution of which reached atom level （ca. 3 A）. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017 was awarded to three scientists for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution. This paper introduced the scientific background and application perspective of cryo-electron microscopy.