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Breakthrough in cryomicroscopy

17.05.2015

One of the main research methods in modern molecular biology is cryoelectron microscopy. Unlike classical electron microscopy, it ensures the perfect preservation of the cell under study - but it loses in terms of magnification. More precisely, lost until recently.

In electron microscopy, fixing substances are used that fasten the proteins of the structures under study. They generate a number of artifacts that modify the object, and in order to avoid this, a cryoelectronic technique has been developed that allows you to instantly cool the structure under study at elevated pressure, while maintaining it in its original form.

The main disadvantage of cryomicroscopy was its low resolution - no more than 0,5 nm, while, for example, X-ray diffraction analysis allows us to examine objects up to 0,2 nm in size. A team of scientists from the Maryland division of the US National Institutes of Health has improved the technique to a resolution of 0,22 nm, which compares the performance of traditional and cryomicroscopic approaches.

The blue-yellow image is a photograph of the α-galactosidase protein. On the left is the level of detail that cryoelectron microscopy made it possible to achieve 3–4 years ago (just a blurry mass), and on the right is the modern part of the image, in which you can see, if not atoms, then at least protein-binding water molecules.

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Pregnancy and childbirth changes a woman's brain 26.12.2016

Scientists from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain) have shown how the structure of a woman's brain changes during pregnancy. It also turned out that the changes persist for two years after the birth of a child - perhaps longer.

The authors of the work, using magnetic resonance imaging, compared the brain structure of 25 women before and after their first pregnancy. As controls, brain scans were also taken by their male partners, as well as another 20 women who were not pregnant, and their partners.

Among the results of the study, a reduction during pregnancy of the gray matter of the brain in the medial frontal and posterior cortex, as well as in certain areas of the prefrontal and temporal cortex in pregnant women was recorded. Scientists believe that this is a picture of adaptation to future motherhood. "These changes may reflect, at least in part, the mechanism of synaptic pruning that is also characteristic of adolescence - weak synapses disappear, giving way to more efficient and specialized neural connections," explained Elseline Hoekzema, one of the authors of the work.

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The researchers did not observe any changes in memory or other functions during pregnancy, so the loss of gray matter does not imply any cognitive impairment, but only speaks of actual adaptive processes.

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