Deep inside a worm’s nose

In a new paper in eLIFE, a team spearheaded by Brandeis postdocs David Doroquez and Cristina Berciu provide a strikingly detailed look at key structures called cilia on neurons involved in sensory perception in the nematode C. elegans. Primary cilia are the antenna-like structures onsensory neurons that gather information about the animal’s environment, such as chemicals, temperature, humidity, and touch. The genetic tools available to manipulate individual, identifiable neurons in C. elegans make worms an excellent model organism to study the assembly and function of cilia. This study requires a description of the structure of the cilia and their immediate surrounding glial support cells, and this new paper, a collaboration of the Sengupta and Nicastro labs, provides high-resolution 3D models showing how diverse and specialized these structures are.

A bouquet of sensory antennae. The 3D ultrastructure of all sensory cilia
and other neuronal projections in the head of the soil roundworm C.
elegans have been reconstructed using serial section transmission electron
microscopy. Shown are 3D isosurface-rendering models emerging from a
transmission electron microscopic cross-section of the worm.

The key techniques in this study were serial section transmission electron microscopy and electron tomography, with structures well-preserved by high-pressure freezing and freeze-substitution. With these techniques, the authors achieved the first high-resolution 3D reconstructions of 50/60 cilia from C. elegans. They describe several previously uncharacterized features — for example, there are distinct types of branching patterns – in one, the two cilia originate from independent basal bodies (as previously seen in Chlamydomonas). In the second, the cilia branch after the basal transition zone, the ciliary gatekeeper region. In the latter case, this basically means that whatever is needed for the cilia to branch has to be transported through the transition zone, suggest there might be novel mechanisms of ciliary protein trafficking. In a third pattern, the branching occurs proximally before the transition zone, and represent therefore dendritic microvilli, rather than ciliary branching. The study also showed different organizations  of microtubules in different cilia types and vesicles in regions of the cilia which have never been seen before, again pointing to new mechanisms of protein transport. They also describe new cilia-glial interactions, which might suggest that cilia and glia talk to each other.

For more about these structures (with lots of pretty pictures and movies), see:

• Doroquez DB, Berciu C, Anderson JR, Sengupta P, Nicastro D. A high-resolution morphological and ultrastructural map of anterior sensory cilia and glia in Caenorhabditis elegans. eLife. 2014;3(0):e01948-e.
• “Electron microscopy: Tomography gives a new dimension to an ancient organelle” (Silva & Barr, eLIFE)
• story at BrandeisNOW

Cryo-electron tomography and the structure of doublet microtubules

In a new paper in PNAS entitled “Cryo-electron tomography reveals conserved features of doublet microtubules“, Assistant Professor of Biology Daniela Nicastro and coworkers describe in striking new detail the structure and organization of the doublet microtubules (DMTs), the most conserved feature of eukaryotic cilia and flagella.

Cilia and flagella are thin, hair-like appendages on the surface of most animal and lower plant cells, which use these organelles to move, and to sense the environment. Defects in cilia and flagella are known to cause disease and developmental disorders, including polycystic kidney disease, respiratory disease, and neurological disorders. An essential feature of these organelles is the presence of nine outer DMTs (hollow protein tubes) that form the cylindrical core of the structure known as the axoneme. The doublet microtubule is formed by tubulin protofilaments and other structural proteins, which provide a scaffold for the attachment of dynein motors (that drive ciliary and flagellar motility) and regulatory components in a highly specific and ordered manner.

To address long-standing questions and controversies about the assembly, stability, and detailed structure of DMTs , the Nicastro lab used a high-resolution imaging technique, cryo-electron microscope tomography (cryo-ET), to probe the structure of DMTs from Chlamydomonas (single-celled algae) and sea urchin sperm flagella. Cryo-ET involves:

1. rapid freezing of the sample to cryo-immobilize the molecules without forming ice crystals,
2. tilting the specimen in the electron microscope to collect ~70 different views from +65° to –65°,
3. computational alignment of the views to calculate a tomogram (a three-dimensional reconstruction of the imaged sample), and
4. computational averaging of repeating structures in the tomogram to reduce noise and increase resolution.

Cryo-ET provided the necessary resolution to show that the B-tubules of DMTs are composed of 10 protofilaments, not 11, and that the inner and outer junctions between the A- and B-tubules are fundamentally different (see figure). The outer junction, crucial for the initial formation of the DMT, appears to be formed by interactions between the tubulin subunits of three protofilaments with unusual tubulin interfaces, but one of these protofilaments does not fit with the conventionally accepted orientation for tubulin protofilaments. This outer junction is important physiologically, as shown by mutations affecting the usual pattern of posttranslational modifications of tubulin. In contrast, the inner junction is not formed by direct interactions between tubulin protofilaments. Instead, a ladder-like structure that is clearly thinner than tubulin connects protofilaments of the A- and B-tubules.

The level of detail also allowed the Nicastro lab to show that the recently discovered microtubule inner proteins (MIPs) located within the A- and B-tubules are more complex than previously thought. MIPs 1 and 2 are both composed of alternating small and large subunits recurring every 16 and/or 48 nm along the inner A-tubule wall. MIP 3 forms small protein arches connecting the two B-tubule protofilaments closest to the inner junction, but does not form the inner junction itself. MIP 4 is associated with the inner surface of the A-tubule along the partition protofilaments, i.e., the five protofilaments of the A-tubule bounded by the two junctions with the B-tubule.

The Nicastro lab plans to build on this foundation in future work on the molecular assembly and stability of the doublet microtubule and axoneme, and hope to use it to elucidate molecular mechanisms of ciliary and flagellar motility and signal transduction in normal and disease states.

Other authors on the paper include Brandeis postdocs Xiaofeng Fu and Thomas Heuser, Brandeis undergrad Alan Tso (’10), and collaborators Mary Porter and Richard Linck from the University of Minnesota.

Undergraduate Biology Lab Students All Get Cataracts

After a series of renovations and modifications, the fall semester of introductory biology (Biol18b) is now an 11 week project-based lab course focused on Molecular and Structural Biology.  Students in the course now design their own mutant of γD crystallin (a human protein implicated in congenital and age-onset cataractogenesis) using site-directed mutagenesis, purify and express their protein, and then study its stability using fluorescence and AFM.

A new paper in CBE – Life Sciences Education by Brandeis undergraduates Dan Treacy, Rebecca Miller, Stefan Isaac, Danielle Saly, and Saumya Sankaran, together with grad student Susannah Gordon-Messer and Assistant Professor of Biology Melissa Kosinski-Collins,  discusses a two-year study focused on assessing both student perception of the course and analyzing the levels conceptual understanding and knowledge retention of participants.  This paper marks the second in a series of articles highlighting studies performed by life science undergraduates enrolled in an educational internship course (Ed92a) with Kosinski-Collins.

High resolution virus structures from electron cryo-microscopy

Professor of Biochemistry Nikolaus Grigorieff discusses recent progress in obtaining virus structures at 4 Å or better resolution from electron microscopy in a new review “Near-atomic resolution reconstructions of icosahedral viruses from electron cryo-microscopy” in Current Opinon in Structural Biology.