CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) has got a cutting-edge facility for cryo-electron microscopy, only the second in the country, which enable scientists to take a close look at molecules such as proteins towards understanding the structural details of living cells and drive drug discovery.
In the past two years, such insights have enabled the scientists and pharmaceutical industries to understand the coronavirus and find potential cures. CSIR director-general Shekhar Mande opened the facility on the institute premises in the presence of director Vinay K. Nandicoori.
“The modern cryo-electron microscopy facility is expected to help us view the functioning of several molecular machines that operate in the cell that were earlier not amenable to conventional structure determination methods such as X-ray crystallography or Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR),” said structural biologist Rajan Sankaranarayanan,
