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Projects 2005

Sponsoring Laboratory/Section:

Laboratory of Cell Biology, National Cancer Institute (NCI)

Mentor:

Sriram Subramaniam, Ph.D.
Chief, Biophysics Section
e-mail: ss1@nih.gov
phone: (301) 496-5959
fax: (301) 480-1589
website: http://ccr.cancer.gov/Labs/lab.asp?LabID=58

Laboratory Description and Project area:

Visualizing cellular components at atomic resolution

With the publication of the sequence of the human genome, there are now tremendous opportunities to understand the organization and function of cells. It is rapidly becoming clear that the various proteins in cells are grouped together into molecular “machines”, and these machines communicate with each other as part of an intricate cellular network that is constantly in action.

Imagine for a moment that you could just keep cranking up the magnification of your optical microscope so that you could go from observing the overall shape of the cell, to its organelles, and then all the way so that you could see every molecule at atomic resolution. Imagine also that you could keep looking as things happened in the cell, maybe in response to some extracellular signal, and watch all the various little machines communicating with each other. Sounds like science fiction? Well, unfortunately, with present day technology, it is science fiction because we do not have the tools or the computing power to do what I have described here.

However, we are beginning to do things that are a start towards this very ambitious goal. Using a newly emerging method called high-resolution electron microscopy, we are developing and applying tools to image whole cells as well as individual protein complexes in their native state. One long-term technological goal in our lab is to achieve complete automation of all stages of data recording, imaging and image processing in an electron microscope. In my view, in a futuristic “high-tech” electron microscope, it should be possible to simply inject a solution containing molecules or a tissue specimen of interest and come back a few hours later to have a three-dimensional reconstruction of the object’s molecular structure. We are many steps and many years away from such automation, but this is the long-term goal.

The summer projects I have in mind would allow you to have a chance to pick from a collection of several projects in molecular and cellular imaging, each of which involve different combinations of computing, engineering, biology and imaging technology. If you are interested you can also take a look at our lab web site: http://hrem.nci.nih.gov. Recent BESIP students who have spent a summer in the laboratory include Alexis Beatty (now in the M.D. program at Duke University), David Brogan (now in the M.D. program at Harvard) and Vipul Sheth (now in the M.D./Ph.D. program at Case Western).

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions (ss1@nih.gov).