Cryo-EM Grant Program from Thermo Fisher Scientific

Dr. Katie Downes completed her PhD in 2023 as a Presidents Doctoral Scholar under the supervision of Prof. Viki Allan at the University of Manchester, where she specialized in the cell biology of the mammalian protein secretory pathway. At least 1/3^rd of our proteome uses the protein secretory pathway; defects in which are associated with a plethora of problems ranging from neurodegenerative diseases to blindness. Today, as a Postdoctoral Researcher working in the laboratory of Dr Giulia Zanetti at the Francis Crick Institute, Katie uses a suite of state-of-the-art electron and light microscopes to characterise the ultrastructure of the early secretory pathway, advancing our understanding of this vital pathway. Outside of the lab, Katie is most likely to be found surrounded by nature, be that out on a hike in the countryside or tending to her ever-growing plant collection.

Xiangsong Feng is a postdoctoral research scientist in Dr. Joachim Frank’s lab at Columbia University in the City of New York. He obtained his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering in 2019 at Harbin Institute of Technology in China and his Ph.D. program focused on development of multi-function microfluidic chips. Fortunately, during that time, he was sponsored by a CSC fellowship from China government to visit a BioMEMS lab under Dr. Qiao Lin’s supervision in Columbia University from 2014 to 2016 and then his horizon was broadened greatly after he took a lead in developing a microspraying method in a collaborative project between Dr. Qiao Lin’s and Dr. Joachim Frank’s labs. He worked with Dr. Ziao Fu from the Dr. Frank’s lab, based on his expertise in microfluidics and the cutting-edge technique of single-particle cryo-EM from the Frank Lab, he for the first time employed the PDMS-based microspraying method to achieve a 3.0-Å structure of apoferritin. With a strong interest in the interdisciplinary field of microfluidics and single-particle cryo-EM, Xiangsong recently developed a microfluidics-based time-resolved cryo-electron microscopy (TRCEM) method to discover the dynamic process during a biological reaction before its equilibrium. As one example, this method has been successfully used for capturing on-pathway intermediates during HflX-mediated ribosome recycling, revealing a progressive splitting of the ribosome, and in this study, Xiangsong closely worked with Dr. Sayan Bhattacharjee in Dr. Frank’s lab, and he will continue to upgrade and employ the TRCEM method to study the dynamic molecular mechanism of ribosomal subunit association and the translation initiation and termination processes and many other biological reactions of interest.

Joseph Yoniles is a second-year biophysics graduate student working between the Dunn Lab at Stanford University and the Dahlberg Lab at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Early in his graduate studies, he developed a keen interest in cryogenic electron tomography (cryo-ET), captivated by the high-resolution volumetric data it provides and the complex computational methods needed to make sense of such data. Joseph is currently developing cryogenic correlative light electron microscopy (cryo-CLEM) methods to investigate the ultrastructural organization of heart muscle cells, or cardiomyocytes. He hopes that his research will enhance our understanding of the mechanisms underlying hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) and other diseases affecting heart contractility. In his free time, Joseph enjoys weightlifting, light hiking, and playing card games.