Biophysical Society Newsletter | November 2017

9

BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER

2017

NOVEMBER

The 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry Goes to… Three Biophysicists! While it might be called the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, three biophysicists have been selected to receive the 2017 award “ for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution. ” The re- cipients, Jacques Dubochet , Joachim Frank , and Richard Hen- derson , have all been members of the Biophysical Society. BPS member Sriram Subramaniam, NIH, noted the timeliness of this award since “we are witnessing an explosion of interest in the application of cryo-EM methods to analyze structures of biological macromolecules.” “It is absolutely terrific that biophysicists Richard Henderson, Jacques Dubochet, and Joachim Frank have been honored with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry this year,” noted BPS President Lukas Tamm in a press release issued by BPS. “By developing cryo-EM into a technique that can now visualize macromolecules and large molecular complexes at near-atom- ic resolution, they have revolutionized structural biology. The resolution revolution that they have unleashed is still unfold- ing before our eyes. Based on their fundamental discoveries and technical developments, we can expect to learn a tre- mendous amount of exciting new biology for many years to come.” With the prize so squarely rooted in biophysics, it’s no sur- prise that many BPS members’ research and careers are based on these earlier findings. David Stokes , a co-chair of the new BPS Cryo-EM Subgroup, reflects on Henderson’s influence on his own career: “I first met Richard at the very first Gordon Conference for 3DEM in 1985. I was finishing my PhD and was interested in working in his lab as a postdoc. He was very approach- able, even for a young grad student. We discussed a potential project and laid out a plan for a fellowship application, which of course involved 2D crystallography of bacteriorhodop- sin. Although that particular application was unsuccessful, Richard helped me find another position in London and encouraged me to use the LMB in Cambridge as a second base, where state-of-the-art EM and computing facilities were available and advice on image reconstruction was generously provided by many renowned scientists. If you wanted to talk to Richard, the best option was to catch him after 8 pm in

Jacques Dubochet Joachim Frank Richard Henderson

the computer room where you could get his full attention for hours on end. His advice was bountiful and the message was always optimistic and full of encouragement. It seemed like everything was doable.” In regards to Frank’s work, Subramaniam commented that “The computational tools that most people use for recon- structing 3D structures from images of individual protein complexes are still based on methods that Joachim Frank pioneered in the 1970’s and 1980’s along with many others such as Marin van Heel and Steve Ludtke , providing a base for further algorithmic developments essential for high resolution structure determination by cryo-EM.” Dubochet, who recently reflected on his early work in electron cryomicroscopy in a Biophysical Journal perspective piece, also has directly affected the work and careers of several BPS members. Subramaniam pointed out that “the experi- mental methods that most people in the field use for prepar- ing specimens for analysis by cryo-EM are still very similar to those pioneered by Jacques Dubochet and co-workers in the 1980’s.” Stokes attributes some of his research success to Dubochet, “I was really lucky to get some early images of vitrified actin filaments from Paula Flicker and Ron Milligan . I was too young and naive to know Jacques Dubochet at that time, but his vitrification technique nevertheless played a very important role in my PhD thesis research and, in fact, in virtually all of my subsequent publications.” Dubochet, an honorary professor of biophysics at the Uni- versity of Lausanne, has been a member of the Biophysical Society since 1996, and has published several articles in Bio- physical Journal . Frank, a HHMI investigator and professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Columbia University, has been a member of the Biophysical Society since 1992 and a frequent contributor to Biophysical Journal . He has presented his research at the Society’s annual meeting regularly and was named the Biophysical Society’s National Lecturer in 2005. Henderson, Program Leader at the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology, United Kingdom, joined the Society in 1994.