Dima Chirgadze

Cryo-electron microscopy

As the Cryo-Electron Microscopy Facility manager, my main area of interest is the use of cryo-transmission electron microscopy (cryo-TEM) in single particle analysis (SPA) and tomography.

In our Facility we provide access to electron microscopes, microscopy training, support and scientific guidance for academic and industrial users wishing to perform cryo-TEM experiments; beginning from cryo-TEM grids preparation through to particle reconstruction and refinement.

Key publications that include data collected on our instruments

Moncrieffe MC, Bollschweiler D, Li B, Penczek PA, Hopkins L, Bryant CE, Klenerman D, Gay NJ (2020). MyD88 death-domain oligomerization determines Myddosome architecture: Implications for Toll-like receptor signaling. Structure, 28(3):281-289. doi: 10.1016/j.str.2020.01.003

Charenton C, Wilkinson ME, Nagai K (2019). Mechanism of 5' splice site transfer for human spliceosome activation. Science, 364(6438):362-367. doi: 10.1126/science.aax3289

Wu Q, Liang S, Ochi T, Chirgadze DY, Huiskonen JT, Blundell TL (2019). Understanding the structure and role of DNA-PK in NHEJ: How X-ray diffraction and cryo-EM contribute in complementary ways. Prog. Biophys. Mol. Biol., 147:26-32. doi: 10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2019.03.007

Kargas V, Castro-Hartmann P, Escudero-Urquijo N, Dent K, Hilcenko C, Sailer C, Zisser G, Marques-Carvalho MJ, Pellegrino S, Wawiórka L, Freund SM, Wagstaff JL, Andreeva A, Faille A, Chen E, Stengel F, Bergler H, Warren AJ (2019). Mechanism of completion of peptidyltransferase centre assembly in eukaryotes. eLife, 8:e44904. doi: 10.7554/eLife.44904

Yu Q, Qu K, Modis Y (2018). Cryo-EM structures of MDA5-dsRNA filaments at different stages of ATP hydrolysis. Mol. Cell, 72(6):999-1012. doi: 10.1016/j.molcel.2018.10.012