Christiane Schaffitzel gave a beautiful presentation of her work that uses cryo elec-tron microscopy to visualise snapshots dur-ing the translation of membrane proteins by the ribosome and their subsequent insertion into the membrane mediated by the signal recognition particle and the FtsY transloca-tion machinery. All three components are exceptionally large and dynamic complex-es that bind to each other to form a bacte-rial factory producing membrane proteins. Christiane and her team have worked out conditions to purify and assemble this fac-tory and how to trap it in specific confor-mations amenable for 3D reconstruction. It will be exciting to keep watching this space as it will reveal more details of the movie at increasing resolution, which seems to be only a matter of patiently picking more and more particles.
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