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Full-Text Articles in Molecular Biology

Tracing Actin Filament Bundles In Three-Dimensional Electron Tomography Density Maps Of Hair Cell Stereocilia, Salim Sazzed, Junha Song, Julio Kovacs, Willi Wriggers, Manfred Auer, Jing He Apr 2018

Tracing Actin Filament Bundles In Three-Dimensional Electron Tomography Density Maps Of Hair Cell Stereocilia, Salim Sazzed, Junha Song, Julio Kovacs, Willi Wriggers, Manfred Auer, Jing He

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) is a powerful method of visualizing the three-dimensional organization of supramolecular complexes, such as the cytoskeleton, in their native cell and tissue contexts. Due to its minimal electron dose and reconstruction artifacts arising from the missing wedge during data collection, cryo-ET typically results in noisy density maps that display anisotropic XY versus Z resolution. Molecular crowding further exacerbates the challenge of automatically detecting supramolecular complexes, such as the actin bundle in hair cell stereocilia. Stereocilia are pivotal to the mechanoelectrical transduction process in inner ear sensory epithelial hair cells. Given the complexity and dense arrangement of actin …


Tracing Beta Strands Using Strandtwister From Cryo-Em Density Maps At Medium Resolutions, Dong Si, Jing He Jan 2014

Tracing Beta Strands Using Strandtwister From Cryo-Em Density Maps At Medium Resolutions, Dong Si, Jing He

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Major secondary structure elements such as α helices and β sheets can be computationally detected from cryoelectron microscopy (cryo-EM) density maps with medium resolutions of 5–10 A˚ . However, a critical piece of information for modeling atomic structures is missing, because there are no tools to detect β strands from cryo-EM maps at medium resolutions. We propose a method, StrandTwister, to detect the traces of β strands through the analysis of twist, an intrinsic nature of a β sheet. StrandTwister has been tested using 100 β sheets simulated at 10 A˚ resolution and 39 β sheets computationally detected from cryo-EM …