DEVELOPMENT OF AFFINITY GRID MATERIALS FOR CRYOELCTRONIC MICROSCOPY

Cryogenic transmission electron microscopy (cryoEM) has become an increasingly common tool for determining structures of proteins and protein complex at near atomic resolution. We seek to determine the structure of p97 by cryoEM using an affinity capture approach that employs a family of novel synthetic lipids bearing water soluble PEG units and known high affinity inhibitor molecules at the distal end of the polymer. A library of inhibitor modified affinity lipopolymers of 5000 KD PEG molecular weights were synthesized. The inhibitor modified lipid coated grids were used to capture p97. The reconstruction of p97 revealed the structure at dimeric state at 3.64 Å and monomeric state at 4.33 Å. A PEG unit composed of 20000 KD molecular weight based polyrotaxane containing NTA ligand as affinity tag has been synthesized, used to concentrate 6x-his tagged p97 on TEM which also enabled to see all 3D orientation of the target particles and an initial model of 10.64 Å resolution of p97 structure was resolved.