Lok, S.-m. | Search bioRxiv

bioRxiv2024

Accurate and fast segmentation of filaments and membranes in micrographs and tomograms with TARDIS

Segmentation of macromolecular structures is the primary bottleneck for studying biomolecules and their organization with electron microscopy in 2D/3D - requiring months of manual effort. Transformer-based Rapid Dimensionless Instance Segmentation (TARDIS) is a deep learning framework that automatically and accurately annotates membranes and filaments. Pre-trained TARDIS models can segment electron tomography (ET) reconstructions from both 3D and 2D electron micrographs of cryo and plastic-embedded samples. Furthermore, by implementing a novel geometric transformer architecture, TARDIS is the only method to provide accurate instance segmentations of these structures. Reducing the annotation time for ET data from months to minutes, we demonstrate segmentation of membranes and filaments in over 13,000 tomograms in the CZII Data Portal. TARDIS thus enables quantitative biophysical analysis at scale for the first time. We show this in application to kinetochore-microtubule attachment and viral-membrane interactions. TARDIS can be extended to new biomolecules and applications and open-source at https://github.com/SMLC-NYSBC/TARDIS.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2022

Structure and Neutralization Mechanism of a Human Antibody Targeting a Complex Epitope on Zika Virus

We currently have an incomplete understanding of why only a fraction of human antibodies that bind to flaviviruses block infection of cells. Here we define the footprint of a strongly neutralizing human monoclonal antibody (mAb G9E) with Zika virus (ZIKV) by both X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy. Flavivirus envelope (E) glycoproteins are present as homodimers on the virion surface, and G9E bound to a quaternary structure epitope spanning both E protomers forming a homodimer. As G9E mainly neutralized ZIKV by blocking a step after viral attachment to cells, we tested if the neutralization mechanism of G9E was dependent on the mAb cross-linking E molecules and blocking low-pH triggered conformational changes required for viral membrane fusion. We introduced targeted mutations to the G9E paratope to create recombinant antibodies that bound to the ZIKV envelope without cross-linking E protomers. The G9E paratope mutants that bound to a restricted epitope on one protomer poorly neutralized ZIKV compared to the wild-type mAb, demonstrating that the neutralization mechanism depended on the ability of G9E to cross-link E proteins. In cell-free low pH triggered viral fusion assay, both wild-type G9E, and epitope restricted paratope mutant G9E bound to ZIKV but only the wild-type G9E blocked fusion. We propose that, beyond antibody binding strength, the ability of human antibodies to cross-link E-proteins is a critical determinant of flavivirus neutralization potency.

microbiology↗