Emerging methods in 3-D biological electron microscopy provide powerful tools and great promise to bridge a critical gap in imaging in the biomedical size spectrum. This comprises a size range of considerable interest that includes cellular protein machines, giant protein and nucleic acid assemblies, small subcellular organelles and bacteria. These objects are generally too large and/or too heterogeneous to be investigated by high resolution X-ray and NMR methods; yet the level of detail afforded by conventional light and electron microscopy is often not adequate to describe their structures at resolutions high enough to be useful in understanding the chemical basis of biological function. The long-term mission of our research program is to obtain an integrated molecular understanding of cellular architecture by combining novel technologies for 3-D biological imaging with advanced methods for image segmentation and computational analysis. I will review our recent progress in imaging and modeling dynamic biological systems, with particular emphasis on applications to signal transduction, HIV/AIDS and cancer.

Lab website: http://electron.nci.nih.gov

Citation Format: Sriram Subramaniam. 3-D electron microscopy in cellular and molecular imaging: Applications to cancer. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual AACR International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research; 2013 Oct 27-30; National Harbor, MD. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Can Prev Res 2013;6(11 Suppl): Abstract nr CN08-03.

©2013 American Association for Cancer Research.
2013