Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research

2 ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN JoVE

Biology

Miniaturized Sample Preparation for Transmission Electron Microscopy

Claudio Schmidli^*1,2, Luca Rima^*1, Stefan A. Arnold^*1,2, Thomas Stohler¹, Anastasia Syntychaki¹, Andrej Bieri¹, Stefan Albiez¹, Kenneth N. Goldie¹, Mohamed Chami³, Henning Stahlberg¹, Thomas Braun¹

¹Center for Cellular Imaging and NanoAnalytics (C-CINA), Biozentrum, University of Basel, ²Swiss Nanoscience Institute, University of Basel, ³BioEM lab, Biozentrum, University of Basel

An instrument and methods for the preparation of nanoliter-sized sample volumes for transmission electron microscopy is presented. No paper-blotting steps are required, thus avoiding the detrimental consequences this can have for proteins, significantly reducing sample loss and enabling the analysis of single cell lysate for visual proteomics.

Biochemistry

Identification of Functional Protein Regions Through Chimeric Protein Construction

Juan M. Adrian-Segarra¹, Holger Lörchner^1,2, Thomas Braun^1,2, Jochen Pöling^1,2

¹Department of Cardiac Development and Remodelling, Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research, ²Partner site Rhein-Main, German Centre for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK)

Structurally related proteins frequently exert distinct biological functions. The exchange of equivalent regions of these proteins in order to create chimeric proteins constitutes an innovative approach to identify critical protein regions that are responsible for their functional divergence.