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PhD Student in Visualization and Image Analysis
| Room: | 2103 (Polacksbacken) |
| E-mail: | lennart (at) cb.uu.se |
| Skype: | |
A challenge in structural biology is to determine the structure, dynamics and functions of proteins. The two traditional techniques for structure determination are X-Ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy. X-Ray crystallography gives a high resolution measurement of atom positions in the protein's crystallized state. However, some proteins are intrinsically unstructured. If the protein is also small, then NMR spectroscopy is a good alternative for determining its dynamics.
X-Ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy both determine the structure of a type of protein, not a specific molecule. To measure that, at least approximately, one possibility is to use cryo-electron tomography. In Cryo-ET, a sample is frozen and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images are taken of it with different tilt angles. Then a 3D reconstruction algorithm recreates a tomogram of the sample.
The ProViz project aims at finding suitable methods for visualizing and analyzing these tomograms. It should also investigate if the use of haptic feedback can lead to better understanding of the data. Just applying force directly on the volume data will not yield a good result. The approach will rather be feeling how well a structure fits with the data or feeling a simulated strength of molecular forces.