+Search query
-Structure paper
| Title | Disulfide-constrained Fabs overcome target size limitation for high-resolution single particle cryoEM. |
|---|---|
| Journal, issue, pages | Nat Commun, Vol. 16, Issue 1, Page 8687, Year 2025 |
| Publish date | Sep 30, 2025 |
Authors | Jennifer E Kung / Matthew C Johnson / Dimitry Tegunov / Christine C Jao / Ping Wu / Angela Oh / May Lin / Jose M Daria / Christopher M Koth / Christopher P Arthur / Alexis Rohou / Jawahar Sudhamsu / ![]() |
| PubMed Abstract | High-resolution protein structures are essential for understanding biological mechanisms and drug discovery. While cryoEM has revolutionized structure determination of large protein complexes, most ...High-resolution protein structures are essential for understanding biological mechanisms and drug discovery. While cryoEM has revolutionized structure determination of large protein complexes, most disease-related proteins are small (<50 kDa) and challenging to resolve due to low signal-to-noise ratios and alignment difficulties. Current scaffold protein strategies increase target size but suffer from inherent flexibility, resulting in poorly resolved targets compared to scaffolds. We present an iteratively engineered molecular design transforming antibody fragments (Fabs) into conformationally Rigid Fabs that enable high-resolution structure determination of small proteins (~20 kDa). This design introduces strategic disulfide bonds, creating well-folded, rigidly constrained Fabs applicable across various species, frameworks, and chimeric constructs. Rigid Fabs enabled high-resolution cryoEM structures (2.3-2.5 Å) of two small proteins: Ang2 (26 kDa) and KRAS (21 kDa). Our disulfide-constrained Rigid Fab strategy provides a general approach for overcoming target size limitation of single-particle cryoEM. |
External links | Nat Commun / PubMed:41027970 / PubMed Central |
| Methods | EM (single particle) |
| Resolution | 3.2 - 3.7 Å |
| Structure data | ![]() EMDB-71531: Angiopoietin-2 in complex with engineered conformationally rigid Fab 5A12.6DS, used for comparison with Fab 5A12.WT ![]() EMDB-71532: Angiopoietin-2 in complex with Fab 5A12.WT, used for comparison with Fab 5A12.6DS |
| Source |
|
Movie
Controller
Structure viewers
About Yorodumi Papers



Authors
External links

Homo sapiens (human)