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Explore a selection of research case studies from the past five years.

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Researchers at the Crick are tackling the big questions about human health and disease, and new findings are published every week.

Our faculty have picked some of the most significant papers published by Crick scientists, all of which are freely available thanks to our open science policy.

droplets containing biochemical reaction about to be frozen

Picturing vital molecular machinery

SCF ubiquitin E3 ligases are versatile molecular machines that control multiple cellular pathways in eukaryotes. They are modular, which means that parts can be changed to fit different jobs; swapping the parts in an efficient and timely manner is mediated by the CAND proteins. To understand how this swapping works on a molecular level, the Enchev lab recreated the process in the lab, and visualised it using cryo-electron microscopy. Their high-resolution view of the intermediates involved, combined with biochemical assays, has generated a detailed model for CAND-SCF regulation, shedding new light on this essential process.

Structural and mechanistic insights into the CAND1-mediated SCF substrate receptor exchange

Published in Molecular Cell

Published

Modular microfluidics enables kinetic insight from time-resolved cryo-EM

Cryo-EM has the potential to study any native conformation of a macromolecule. However, the sample preparation time is high, compared to the timescale of most protein interactions and conformational changes. In this paper, we established a robust method of time-resolved cryo-EM sample preparation. We produced high-quality samples for microscopy while speeding up the process of making them by several orders of magnitude. This allowed samples to be collected within 30ms of the initiation of a biochemical reaction, within the timeframe of many critically important and interesting processes. This enables a whole new class of experiments in structural biology research.

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Published in Nature Communications

Published

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Research case studies 

Explore a selection of recent case studies that spotlight particular areas of research at the Crick.