Visualizing transiently associated catalytic domains in assembly-line biosynthesis using cryo-electron microscopy

While cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) has revolutionized the structure determination of supramolecular protein complexes that are refractory to structure determination by X-ray crystallography, structure determination by cryo-EM can nonetheless be complicated by excessive conformational flexibility or structural heterogeneity resulting from weak or transient protein-protein association. Since such transient complexes are often critical for function, specialized approaches must be employed for the determination of meaningful structure-function relationships. Here, we outline examples in which transient protein-protein interactions have been visualized successfully by cryo-EM in the biosynthesis of fatty acids, polyketides, and terpenes. These studies demonstrate the utility of chemical crosslinking to stabilize transient protein-protein complexes for cryo-EM structural analysis, as well as the use of partial signal subtraction and localized reconstruction to extract useful structural information out of cryo-EM data collected from inherently dynamic systems. While these approaches do not always yield atomic resolution insights on protein-protein interactions, they nonetheless enable direct experimental observation of complexes in assembly-line biosynthesis that would otherwise be too fleeting for structural analysis.