Structural study of ion channels by cryo-electron microscopy

Ion channels are membrane proteins and fulll their function in lipid bilayers. It is expected that the channels experience close interactions with lipids, and some of them are even strongly gated by lipids. To investigate the lipid eects on the structures of ion channels, electron crystallography of the channels in membrane would arguably be the best method of choice because it can deliver high-resolution structures of channels in membrane (Gonen et al. 2006). Alternatively, restrained spherical reconstruction of ion channels in small vesicles (Jiang et al. 2001; Wang and Sigworth 2009, 2010) will generate 3D reconstructions at better resolutions when enough molecules in vesicles can be imaged and analyzed.