News

User Tale: Enzymatic action

Published: Sept. 28, 2020

Inside cells, DNA is coiled around histone proteins, making spools of nucleosomes. Cynthia Wolberger studies the molecular machines that unwrap the chromatin packing to transcribe or repair genes. The structures reveal complicated biological …

User Tale: Rules of motion

Published: July 31, 2020

Priyamvada Acharya studies how proteins on the surface of HIV move to invade cells and evade the immune system. For many years her research has been focused on the HIV-1 envelope (Env), a …

User Tale: Cosmic Squared

Published: June 27, 2020

As one of best selling games of all time, Minecraft and its spinoffs are familiar to hundreds of millions of dedicated fans. But few people know about the video game’s legacy in cryo-electron …

User Tale: Kaps are Cool

Updated: April 29, 2020

Three weeks after most research on campus was paused in the first wave of the U.S. coronavirus pandemic, Yuh Min Chook learned that a cancer drug her group helped develop was going into …

User Tale: Spiraling into focus

Updated: March 30, 2020

Some things take time and patience. Like generating higher atomic resolution structures from cryo-electron microscopy. Or reconstructing a protein’s hidden coils in atomic models. Or mastering the skills and teamwork in field hockey. …

OS Alerts: Mac Catalina 10.15 and CentOS 8

Updated: March 25, 2020

We've got a couple of operating system alerts for those of you looking to buy new computers or update existing Mac or Linux machines: SBGrid is not compatible with MacOS 10.15 "Catalina without …

User Tale: Seeing cilia

Published: Feb. 27, 2020

For sports buffs, the end of winter ushers in a new season of competitive delights. Alan Brown’s spring thoughts turn to Formula One and the pre-season test runs of new designs and rampant …

User Tale: For the Love of EM

Updated: Jan. 30, 2020

One day soon, the process of collecting data from cryo-electron microscopes may be as automated as it is on synchrotron beamlines. Until then, Guy Schoehn and his team will be busy training and …

User Tale: Protein Puddles

Updated: Dec. 18, 2019

A few years ago on a visit to Cape Cod, Michael Rosen was walking along the beach at low tide. He came across a tidal pool set in a giant rock. The pool …

User Tale: Changing channels

Updated: Sept. 30, 2019

Kissing a frog might not spark a fairy tale ending, but learning how frogs survive some of nature’s most deadly poisons has opened a new chapter in the laboratory of Daniel Minor Jr. …

Beyond Cool: How SBGrid grew out of X-ray crystallography and assimilated the future of structural biology

Published: July 31, 2019

The evolution of SBGrid tracks with advances in structural biology, and cryo-EM is at the forefront of that change. This article reflects on 3 pivotal papers that describe key advances in cryoEM, from …

User Tale: Listening Tips

Published: July 30, 2019

When Marcos Sotomayor explains his research out loud, his voice tickles the topic of his studies. A core biological question in his laboratory addresses how hearing happens at the molecular level. For words …

User Tale: Hao Wu

Updated: June 28, 2019

Hao Wu is a third generation scientist whose formative years were shaped by the Chinese Cultural Revolution. In fact, it’s fair to say the revolution, better known for persecution of academics and intellectuals, …

Software Tale: Beyond Cool

Updated: June 27, 2019

With the 2017 Nobel Prize, cryo-electron microscopy became briefly famous outside of the growing clutch of scientists using the techniques to capture detailed views of molecules that keep life humming along. The prize …

User Tale: Piotr Sliz, Ph.D.

Updated: June 21, 2019

The Natural Bridge In 2013, Piotr Sliz and the team at SBGrid published a paper in eLife describing, for the first time in a formal, academic fashion, the SBGrid model. In existence since …

Developer Tale: Sharper Image

Updated: May 28, 2019

When Pawel Penczek took his first job in the lab of Joachim Frank, a pioneer in cryo-Electron Microscopy, he had never heard about the technique. "My interest was in digital signal processing," says …

User Tale: Message Received

Updated: May 28, 2019

As an undergraduate at University of Montpellier in France in the early 2000s, Sébastien Granier’s interest in science was stoked by the passionate lectures of a renowned plant physiologist who studied the architecture …

User Tale: Spiro-Gyra

Updated: May 28, 2019

When Alejandro Buschiazzo took on the responsibility of building a structural biology core facility in Latin America, he was taking a risk. He was an assistant professor at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, …

User Tale: From Disorder, Function

Updated: May 28, 2019

After earning a chemistry degree at MIT in 1985, Julie Forman-Kay headed to Yale for graduate work in the lab of structural biology pioneer Fred Richards. Forman-Kay – who says she never grew …

SBGrid Webinar Archive

Updated: May 28, 2019

Watch SBGridTV on YouTube. If you missed any of the webinars from our SBGrid Lunch Break series, featuring software developers introducing new releases, suggesting helpful tips and tricks, or offering a basic tutorial …