Cryo-EM of a Cloneable Selenium Nanoparticle
Cloneable contrast agents that impart contrast to discrete protein densities do not reliably exist for cryo-electron microscopy. In contrast, fluorescent proteins are reliable and routine for localizing fluorescent protein / protein of interest genetic fusions in visible-light microscopies. Our lab is developing intracellular cloneable tags that impart distinguishable contrast to proteins of interest in cryo-electron tomography and correlated light-electron microscopy. The cloneable tag which we call a ‘Cloneable Selenium Nanoparticle’ (cSeNP) is based upon a selenium reducing enzyme, isolated from seleniferous soils in the Colorado Rockies. We ...