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Updated: Jan 25, 2026

Preparation of High-Temperature Sample Grids for Cryo-EM
Published on: July 26, 2021
Cryo-EM structure of the Ebola virus nucleoprotein-RNA complex
Robert N Kirchdoerfer1, Erica Ollmann Saphire2, Andrew B Ward1
1Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA.
Abstract:
Ebola virus is an emerging virus that is capable of causing a deadly disease in humans. Replication, transcription and packaging of the viral genome are carried out by the viral nucleocapsid. The nucleocapsid is a complex of the viral nucleoprotein, RNA and several other viral proteins. The nucleoprotein forms large, RNA-bound, helical filaments and acts as a scaffold for additional viral proteins. The 3.1 Å resolution single-particle cryo-electron microscopy structure of the nucleoprotein-RNA helical filament presented here resembles previous structures determined at lower resolution, while providing improved molecular details of protein-protein and protein-RNA interactions. The higher resolution of the structure presented here will facilitate the design and characterization of novel and specific Ebola virus therapeutics targeting the nucleocapsid.
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