Join us for our next in-person event, hosted at NYU's Simons Center where we will hear from Sonya Hanson at Flatiron Institute.

Since the resolution revolution in cryo-EM the method has become a dominant technique for high resolution structure determination of biological macromolecules. However, it is often still treated as a method for obtaining individual high resolution structures, as had been the necessity for decades with X-ray crystallography, despite the potential access cryo-EM gives to conformational ensembles. Here we delve into progress and pitfalls toward the analysis of conformational heterogeneity of single particle cryo-EM datasets. These methods have the potential to give access to not only the structures of metastable states but their populations, however understanding the caveats of different methodologies is critical. We have taken two approaches to compare and contrast different methods to extract conformational heterogeneity from cryo-EM: 1) analyzing a single experimental dataset using the variety of methods available and 2) conducting a conformational heterogeneity challenge for the cryo-EM community in which groups across the world participated using their own algorithms to extract states and populations. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of our own future directions for methods development in this area, and how combining cryo-EM with molecular dynamics simulation is essential.

Thank you very much to the NYU Simons Center for hosting this event! The [NYU Simons Center for Computational Physical Chemistry](https://wp.nyu.edu/sccpc/) aims to be a hub for computational physical chemistry. Spanning many disciplines — mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and computer science — the [Simons Center](https://wp.nyu.edu/sccpc/) promotes the use of computational, physics-based approaches to solving problems, fosters collaboration across the global computational chemistry community, and works to expand and strengthen the diversity of participants in this field.

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Sonya Hanson is a Research Scientist and Project Leader at the Flatiron Institute, joint between the Center for Computational Biology and Center for Computational Mathematics. Her research focuses on the use of molecular simulation in combination with experimental data to shed light on fundamental biological processes, with a focus on the improved elucidation of protein conformational dynamics and ensembles toward understanding these processes. She received her BS in Biophysics from the University of Southern California and her DPhil in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford. Before joining the Flatiron Institute she trained at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Columbia University, and was a Humboldt Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics.

Sonya Hanson

Progress and Pitfalls in Free Energy Landscapes from Cryo-EM

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New York Area Group for Informatics and Modeling (NYAGIM)

Progress and Pitfalls in Free Energy Landscapes from Cryo-EM

New York Area Group for Informatics and Modeling (NYAGIM)

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