TY  - UNPB
M1  - Doctoral
A1  - Ing, Gabriel
PB  - UCL (University College London)
Y1  - 2024/03/28/
N2  - Liquid-phase transmission electron microscopy (LTEM) is a powerful technique to
study the dynamics of molecular processes occurring in real-time. While the technique
is becoming increasingly established in inorganic and metal-containing systems, the
next frontier of LTEM is the study of organic and biological material at the molecular
level. In this project, I have worked on establishing LTEM as an effective imaging
method to image biomolecules. To this end, I have imaged several control proteins
including ferritin, ?-galactosidase and apoferritin, with a variety of state-of-the-art
LTEM systems. This project has proved highly challenging due to a combination of low
inherent contrast, radiation sensitivity of the proteins and fast motion of the particles.
Alongside the imaging of single proteins, an applied study of the aggregation of
amyloid-? peptide was also performed, yielding interesting data on the nucleation of
amyloid-? oligomers and fibrils, as well as demonstrations of phase separation. The
work on amyloid-? demonstrates the advantages of imaging large-scale systems with
LTEM, despite the challenges associated with imaging individual proteins. Finally, this
thesis also details the development of the Python library SimpliPyTEM to aid with
image processing and analysis of electron microscopy images and videos. Overall, the
work herein details the development of LTEM as a method for imaging biological
molecules, alongside a discussion of the limitations and future of the technique.
AV  - public
EP  - 239
N1  - Copyright © The Author 2023. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author?s request.
ID  - discovery10189770
KW  - Electron Microscopy
KW  -  Liquid-phase Electron Microscopy
KW  -  Transmission Electron Microscopy
TI  - Development of Liquid-phase Transmission Electron Microscopy for the study of Proteins and Peptides
UR  - https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10189770/
SP  - 1
ER  -