Year: 2023
Type: conference-abstract
Abstract: Cryo-EM involves a wide range of concepts and computational tasks that would benefit from easily accessible software as learning and research tools. Throughout the past five decades since the birth of 3DEM in the late 1960s, numerous software programs have been developed and released to the community, providing essential learning and research opportunities, and contributing to the revolution in structural biology by cryo-EM. Most computer programs require the users to download, install, and set up on a particular operating system running on a particular CPU architecture and depending on a particular version of additional software/libraries, which limits the access to many potential audiences, for example, people only with access to or experience in Windows but not Linux systems. We aim to maximize access to cryo-EM learning and research tools with Web apps that utilize the de facto universal availability of Web browsers on all computers. To this end, we have developed web apps covering multiple concepts/tasks from how to ensure high-occupancy binding of ligands to proteins for improved samples (Binding), simulation of 1D/2D contrast transfer functions and their effects on images (CTFSimulation), understanding of helical symmetry and its relationship to the related 2D crystal lattice (HelicalLattice), helical indexing in Fourier space using layer lines (HILL) or in real space using asymmetric reconstructions (HI3D), de novo identification of protein directly from density maps (map2seq), and illustration of amyloid protein structures (ProCart). These Web apps have been freely accessible from our lab website (https://jiang.bio.purdue.edu/software) without the need for downloading/installation. These Web applications have attracted more than 3k users from all continents, except Antarctica.
Source: Microscopy and Microanalysis
Institution: Purdue University West Lafayette
Language: English
Subfield: Structural Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4385072780