News

New paper on bioRxiv

Posted by: Joachim Frank  |  August 14, 2018  |  No comment
Real-time structural dynamics of late steps in bacterial translation initiation visualized using time-resolved cryogenic electron microscopy Sandip Kaledhonkar, Ziao Fu, Kelvin Caban, Wen Li, Bo Chen, Ming Sun, 
Ruben L. Gonzalez Jr., Joachim Frank
ABSTRACT
Bacterial translation initiation entails the tightly regulated joining of the 50S ribosomal subunit to an initiator transfer RNA (fMet-tRNAfMet)-containing...

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Ken Downing 1949 – 2017

Posted by: Joachim Frank  |  August 6, 2018  |  Comment
It was with great sadness that I heard that Ken has passed away. I had many encounters with him over the course of more than 40 years, and the thought that his presence, his voice, his driest of all wits are now all gone is difficult for me to believe. I met Ken in 1972 in Ithaca, New York when he was a student in Applied Physics with Benjamin Siegel at Cornell University, and I was a postdoc there finishing the third of three parts of my Harkness...

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New paper in iScience

Posted by: Joachim Frank  |  August 2, 2018  |  No comment
Three-Dimensional Analysis of Mitochondrial Crista Ultrastructure in a Patient with
Leigh Syndrome by In Situ Cryoelectron Tomography Siegmund, S.E., Grassucci, R., Carter, S.D., Barca, E., Farino, Z.J., Juanola-Falgarona,
M., Zhang, P., Tanji, K., Hirano, M., Schon, E.A., Frank, J., and Freyberg, Z.
Mitochondrial diseases produce profound neurological dysfunction via mutations affecting mitochondrial...

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Physics in Frankfurt

Posted by: Joachim Frank  |  July 24, 2018  |  No comment
In Frankfurt, where I was recently on the occasion of the 350th Anniversary of Merck in nearby Darmstadt, I met with Horst Schmidt-Boecking, for 9 years my classmate in high school (Fuerst Johann Moritz Gymnasium in Siegen). My high school class was quite unusual: 4 of the 22 who made it to the Abitur chose to study Physics: one became an astrophysicist, one (myself) a biophysicist, and one went into the coordination of Space missions. At another place I have attributed this high percentage to the inspiring lectures of our Physics teacher, Willy Schroeder. Horst,...

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F1000Prime Faculty Member of the month

Posted by: Joachim Frank  |  July 13, 2018  |  No comment
F1000Prime Blog:
July’s faculty member of the month is Nobel laureate Joachim Frank. In 2017 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Richard Henderson and Jacques Dubochet for their pioneering work in cryogenic electron microscopy, a visualisation technique where a biological sample is cooled to extremely low temperatures of -150 °C. In this Q&A, we go back to October 2017 to talk about the day the Nobel prize winners were announced. Among the celebrating and the press engagements, Joachim still found the time to write a Prime recommendation for an article...

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Nobel lecture now online

Posted by: Joachim Frank  |  July 9, 2018  |  No comment
Single-Particle Reconstruction of Biological Molecules---Story in a Sample (Nobel Lecture) has now been published online in Angewandte Chemie, a journal of the German Chemical Society, GDCh. These are English and translated versions of the Nobel speech, elaborated as text with references. Click here for English. Click here for German.

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Featured in Physics World magazine

Posted by: Joachim Frank  |  July 9, 2018  |  No comment
The rise and rise of cryogenic electron microscopy. Combining physics, biology and chemistry, structural biology investigates the anatomy of biological macromolecules, and proteins in particular, improving understanding of diseases and enabling drug discovery. Speaking at the 68th Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting in Germany last week, biophysicist Joachim Frank says that the field is entering a new era with a bright future thanks to advances in cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM)... Click...

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July 4th Tribute Honors 38 Distinguished Immigrants

Posted by: Joachim Frank  |  July 4, 2018  |  No comment
Philanthropic foundation established by Scottish immigrant Andrew Carnegie invites Americans to join in public awareness initiative. “Andrew Carnegie understood that immigrants come here to be a part of America, not apart from America” said Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation ...
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New article in IUCrJ

Posted by: Melissa Thomas Baum  |  July 2, 2018  |  No comment
Click here to read Identification of ions in experimental electrostatic potential maps.
Jimin Wang, Zheng Liu, Joachim Frank, and Peter B. Moore

ABSTRACT: Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) directly images the distribution of electrostatic potential (ESP) within macromolecules, and thus can provide much more information about atomic charge than X-ray crystallography....

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Top downloaded article in Protein Science

Posted by: Joachim Frank  |  June 19, 2018  |  No comment
Determination of the ribosome structure to a resolution of 2.5 Å by single-particle cryo-EM, published in Protein Science, was one of the journal’s top 20 most downloaded recent papers!* As of year-end 2017 the article has received 1832 downloads. * Comparative exercise based on measuring downloads within the first 12 months of online publication, for articles published between 2016-2017

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