Biology subjects

Zivanov, J.

Publications and source records attributed to Zivanov, J..

7 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2024

An image processing pipeline for electron cryo-tomography in RELION-5

Electron tomography of frozen, hydrated samples allows structure determination of macromolecular complexes that are embedded in complex environments. Provided that the target complexes may be localised in noisy, three-dimensional tomographic reconstructions, averaging images of multiple instances of these molecules can lead to structures with sufficient resolution for de novo atomic modelling. Although many research groups have contributed image processing tools for these tasks, a lack of standardisation and inter-operability represents a barrier for newcomers to the field. Here, we present an image processing pipeline for electron tomography data in RELION-5, with functionality ranging from the import of unprocessed movies to the automated building of atomic models in the final maps. Our explicit definition of metadata items that describe the steps of our pipeline has been designed for inter-operability with other software tools and provides a framework for further standardisation.

biophysics↗

bioRxiv2022

A Bayesian approach to single-particle electron cryo-tomography in RELION-4.0

We present a new approach for macromolecular structure determination from multiple particles in electron cryo-tomography (cryo-ET) data sets. Whereas existing subtomogram averaging approaches are based on 3D data models, we propose to optimise a regularised likelihood target that approximates a function of the 2D experimental images. In addition, analogous to Bayesian polishing and contrast transfer function (CTF) refinement in single-particle analysis, we describe approaches that exploit the increased signal-to-noise ratio in the averaged structure to optimise tilt series alignments, beam-induced motions of the particles throughout the tilt series acquisition, defoci of the individual particles, as well as higher-order optical aberrations of the microscope. Implementation of our approaches in the open-source software package RELION aims to facilitate their general use, in particular for those researchers who are already familiar with its single-particle analysis tools. We illustrate for three applications that our approaches allow structure determination from cryo-ET data to resolutions sufficient for de novo atomic modelling.

biophysics↗

bioRxiv2020

Structures, conformations and distributions of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein trimers on intact virions

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virions are surrounded by a lipid bilayer from which spike (S) protein trimers protrude. Heavily glycosylated S trimers bind the ACE2 receptor and mediate entry of virions into target cells. S exhibits extensive conformational flexibility: it modulates the exposure of its receptor binding site and later undergoes complete structural rearrangement to drive fusion of viral and cellular membranes. The structures and conformations of soluble, overexpressed, purified S proteins have been studied in detail using cryo-electron microscopy. The structure and distribution of S on the virion surface, however, has not been characterised. Here we applied cryo-electron microscopy and tomography to image intact SARS-CoV-2 virions, determining the high-resolution structure, conformational flexibility and distributions of S trimers in situ on the virion surface. These results provide a basis for understanding the conformations of S present on the virion, and for studying their interactions with neutralizing antibodies.

microbiology↗

bioRxiv2020

High-resolution cryo-EM structure of urease from the pathogen Yersinia enterocolitica

Urease converts urea into ammonia and carbon dioxide and makes urea available as a nitrogen source for all forms of life except animals. In human bacterial pathogens, ureases also aid in the invasion of acidic environments such as the stomach by raising the surrounding pH. Here, we report the structure of urease from the pathogen Yersinia enterocolitica at better than 2 [A] resolution from cryo-electron microscopy. Y. enterocolitica urease is a dodecameric assembly of a trimer of three protein chains, ureA, ureB and ureC. The high data quality enables detailed visualization of the urease bimetal active site and of the impact of radiation damage. Our data are of sufficient quality to support drug development efforts.

molecular biology↗

bioRxiv2019

Estimation of high-order aberrations and anisotropic magnification from cryo-EM datasets in RELION-3.1

We present methods that detect three types of aberrations in single-particle cryo-EM data sets: symmetrical and antisymmetrical optical aberrations and magnification anisotropy. Because our methods only depend on the availability of a preliminary 3D reconstruction from the data, they can be used to correct for these aberrations for any given cryo-EM data set, a posteriori. Using five publicly available data sets, we show that considering these aberrations improves the resolution of the 3D reconstruction when the effects are present. The methods are implemented in version 3.1 of our open-source software package RELION.

biophysics↗

bioRxiv2018

RELION-3: new tools for automated high-resolution cryo-EM structure determination

Here, we describe the third major release of relion. CPU-based vector acceleration has been added in addition to GPU support, which provides flexibility in use of resources and avoids memory limitations. Reference-free autopicking with Laplacian-of-Gaussian filtering and execution of jobs from python allows non-interactive processing during acquisition, including 2D-classification, de novo model generation and 3D-classification. Perparticle refinement of CTF parameters and correction of estimated beam tilt provides higher-resolution reconstructions when particles are at different heights in the ice, and/or coma-free alignment has not been optimal. Ewald sphere curvature correction improves resolution for large particles. We illustrate these developments with publicly available data sets: together with a Bayesian approach to beam-induced motion correction it leads to resolution improvements of 0.2-0.7 [A] compared to previous relion versions.

biophysics↗

bioRxiv2018

A Bayesian approach to beam-induced motion correction in cryo-EM single-particle analysis

We present a new method to estimate the trajectories of particle motion and the amount of cumulative beam damage in electron cryo-microscopy (cryo-EM) single particle analysis. We model the motion within the sample through the use of Gaussian Process regression. This allows us to associate with each hypothetical set of particle trajectories a prior likelihood that favours spatially and temporally smooth motion without imposing hard constraints. This formulation enables us to express the a-posteriori likelihood of a set of particle trajectories as a product of that prior likelihood and an observation likelihood given by the data, and to then maximise this a-posteriori likelihood. Since our smoothness prior requires three parameters that describe the statistics of the observed motion, we also propose an efficient stochastic method to estimate those parameters. Finally, we propose a practical means of estimating the average amount of cumulative radiation damage as a function of radiation dose and spatial frequency, and a robust method of fitting relative B-factors to it. We evaluate our method on three publicly available datasets, and illustrate its usefulness by comparison with state-of-the-art methods and previously published results. The new method has been implemented as Bayesian polishing in RELION-3, where it replaces the existing particle polishing method, as it outperforms the latter in all tests conducted.

biophysics↗