Whether it is a malaria parasite invading a cell, or the misfolding of proteins in the brain in Alzheimer's, understanding how a disease starts and gets going is essential to finding therapies and treatments.
Researchers are using cryogenic electron microscopy (cryoEM) as their visual reconnaissance to see where things go wrong. Using cryoEM and a related technique, cryo-electron tomography (cryoET), a growing number of Penn Medicine labs are making significant findings that deepen our understanding disease mechanisms through new visualizations.
Yi-Wei Chang, PhD, an assistant professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics and associate director of the Institute of Structural Biology at the Perelman School of Medicine, who originally studied in X-ray crystallography while earning his PhD, became fascinated with cryoET when a visiting scientist gave a talk about the technique.
"That talk set my life goal," he recalled. "I said, 'This is the way I want to do structural biology. I want to see structures in the cell while they are doing their function.'"
Chang and his team are exploring how various pathogens-viruses, bacteria, and parasites-invade the body's cells.
