BREAKING/ Snuck out late on a Friday night, the revelation that Department of Health and Social Care is going to reassess its PPE guidance for frontline staff. That’s right. In peak pandemic, they’re going to complete a “piece of work” on staff protection. What an utter disgrace.

Best #Ribosome synthesis meeting so far 😉 Big thank you’s to our fantastic community, we will not forget Engelberg 2022 #RNA

Excited to share our latest preprint now that the pdb/emdb deposition is released. If you are interested in cryoEM sample preparation methods and/or ribosomes and the structural role of ribosomal RNA modifications, check it out! Some bullet points below, a thread.

New sample preparation method, generates very thin ice, adapted from the work of the Edoardo D'Imprima lab, tailored for ribosomes but may very well work with other specimen. It is extremely easy, reproducible, and does not require any special equipment. Try if for yourself!

1.67 A structure of the large subunit of the human ribosome showing thousands of waters, magnesium, potassium ions, and a well-defined spermine (SPM) molecule. Almost all rRNA modifications can be visualised, in full agreement with previously published mass spectrometry data.

New structural role for the rRNA 2’-O- and base methylations in the ribosome. These leverage unconventional carbon-oxygen hydrogen bonds (CH...O), also called ‘weak’ H-bonds, to stabilise modified rRNA residues. Example with methylated base below, CH...O bonds in purple dashes.

A striking functional example where a CH...O bond links 2’-O-methylguanosine 4196 to a coordinating water molecule in the P-site tRNA binding pocket. rRNA residue 4196 is then ideally located to interact with the CCA end of the tRNA through Watson-Crick-Franklin base pairing.

Sample preparation method allows for high throughput data collection, well suited for structure-based drug design. Better than 2 A resolution structures in less than 4h of microscope time. Examples with homoharringtonine, blasticidin S, and cycloheximide bound are presented.

And of course the link to the preprint :) doi.org/10.1101/2023.0…

Thank You TRANSLACORE_Network for a fantastic meeting in Lisboa to discuss #protein synthesis in disease #RNA Alan Warren Elena Martens Pierre Close

Another application of our new PMA-functionalisation sample preparation method biorxiv.org/content/10.110… This time the target was the small subunit of the human ribosome.

TRANSLACORE_Network Fantastic SDS meeting here in Cambridge last week.

Finally!!! Tuning ribosomes and cell differentiation with one single methylation - check out our latest publication from @therealLundLab : authors.elsevier.com/c/1hRk85Sx5gtw…

New paper co-led by CIMR's Alan Warren with Wellcome Sanger Institute Cambridge Stem Cell Institute York Biomedical Research Institute nature.com/articles/s4146…

🙏Thank you Tianjin for a fantastic Conference on haematological diseases and for an incredible hospitality 🎉#RNA #DBA #Ribosome #Blood

🤩 We learned a lot on #blood diseases in Tianjin. Thank you #RNA #Ribosome #DBA🩸