Julia Mahamid

Last updated
Julia Mahamid
Alma mater
Known for cryo-electron tomography
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
Thesis Structural Investigation of Bone Mineralization Processes in the Zebrafish Fin and Embryonic Mouse Models [1]  (2010)
Academic advisors
Website Mahamid Group

Julia Mahamid is a cell biologist, structural biologist, and electron microscopist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, who utilizes biomolecular condensates and advanced cellular cryo-electron tomography to enhance the comprehension of the functional organization of the cytoplasm. She leads the Mahamid Group. [2]

Contents

Education

Mahamid completed her Biology studies at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Israel between 2000 and 2003. After that, she pursued her Master's degree in Chemistry from 2003 to 2005, at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, under the guidance of Lia Addadi in collaboration with Dan Caspi. Later, from 2006 to 2010, Mahamid completed her Ph.D. studies under the supervision of Lia Addadi and Steve Weiner. [1]

Career and research

For her postgraduate work, from 2011 to 2017, Mahamid worked as a postdoctoral researcher the guidance of Wolfgang Baumeister at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany. [3] [4] [5]

Since 2017, Mahamid has been a group leader at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany. [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]

Mahamid's research is based on the development of new methods for cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET), which is a technique for high-resolution 3D imaging of cellular machinery in its natural state. Mahamid played a key role in the development of the cryo-focused ion beam (cryo-FIB) technique that facilitated the creation of "electron-transparent windows" in cells, enabling the observation of cellular structures and macromolecular complexes in their natural environment. [12]

Mahamid is a well-known[ according to whom? ] cell biologist, structural biologist, and electron microscopist. Hence, she is frequently invited to speak at seminars, [13] [14] [15] workshops, [16] [17] [18] and conferences [19] [20] in the field.

Mahamid is on the editorial board of the Journal of Structural Biology. [21]

Awards and honours

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Structural biology</span> Study of molecular structures in biology

Structural biology is a field that is many centuries old which, as defined by the Journal of Structural Biology, deals with structural analysis of living material at every level of organization. Early structural biologists throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries were primarily only able to study structures to the limit of the naked eye's visual acuity and through magnifying glasses and light microscopes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Transmission electron cryomicroscopy</span>

Transmission electron cryomicroscopy (CryoTEM), commonly known as cryo-EM, is a form of cryogenic electron microscopy, more specifically a type of transmission electron microscopy (TEM) where the sample is studied at cryogenic temperatures. Cryo-EM, specifically 3-dimensional electron microscopy (3DEM), is gaining popularity in structural biology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cryogenic electron tomography</span>

Cryogenic electron tomography (cryoET) is an imaging technique used to reconstruct high-resolution (~1–4 nm) three-dimensional volumes of samples, often biological macromolecules and cells. cryoET is a specialized application of transmission electron cryomicroscopy (CryoTEM) in which samples are imaged as they are tilted, resulting in a series of 2D images that can be combined to produce a 3D reconstruction, similar to a CT scan of the human body. In contrast to other electron tomography techniques, samples are imaged under cryogenic conditions. For cellular material, the structure is immobilized in non-crystalline, vitreous ice, allowing them to be imaged without dehydration or chemical fixation, which would otherwise disrupt or distort biological structures.

Patrick Cramer is a German chemist, structural biologist, and molecular systems biologist. In 2020, he was honoured to be an international member of the National Academy of Sciences. He became president of the Max Planck Society in June 2023.

Resolution in the context of structural biology is the ability to distinguish the presence or absence of atoms or groups of atoms in a biomolecular structure. Usually, the structure originates from methods such as X-ray crystallography, electron crystallography, or cryo-electron microscopy. The resolution is measured of the "map" of the structure produced from experiment, where an atomic model would then be fit into. Due to their different natures and interactions with matter, in X-ray methods the map produced is of the electron density of the system, whereas in electron methods the map is of the electrostatic potential of the system. In both cases, atomic positions are assumed similarly.

In structural biology, as well as in virtually all sciences that produce three-dimensional data, the Fourier shell correlation (FSC) measures the normalised cross-correlation coefficient between two 3-dimensional volumes over corresponding shells in Fourier space (i.e., as a function of spatial frequency). The FSC is the three-dimensional extension of the two-dimensional Fourier ring correlation (FRC); also known as: spatial frequency correlation function.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cryogenic electron microscopy</span> Form of transmission electron microscopy (TEM)

Cryogenic electron microscopy (cryoEM) is a cryomicroscopy technique applied on samples cooled to cryogenic temperatures. For biological specimens, the structure is preserved by embedding in an environment of vitreous ice. An aqueous sample solution is applied to a grid-mesh and plunge-frozen in liquid ethane or a mixture of liquid ethane and propane. While development of the technique began in the 1970s, recent advances in detector technology and software algorithms have allowed for the determination of biomolecular structures at near-atomic resolution. This has attracted wide attention to the approach as an alternative to X-ray crystallography or NMR spectroscopy for macromolecular structure determination without the need for crystallization.

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Lori Anne Passmore is a Canadian/British cryo electron microscopist and structural biologist who works at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) at the University of Cambridge. She is known for her work on multiprotein complexes involved in gene expression and development of new supports for cryo-EM.

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References

  1. 1 2 https://www.academia-net.org/profile/julia-mahamid/77167
  2. "Mahamid Group – In-cell structural analysis of phase separation and molecular crowding".
  3. https://en.bio-protocol.org/en/bpdetail?id=1575
  4. Mahamid, Julia; Schampers, Ruud; Persoon, Hans; Hyman, Anthony A.; Baumeister, Wolfgang; Plitzko, Jürgen M. (2015). "A focused ion beam milling and lift-out approach for site-specific preparation of frozen-hydrated lamellas from multicellular organisms". Journal of Structural Biology. 192 (2): 262–269. doi:10.1016/j.jsb.2015.07.012. PMID   26216184.
  5. Mahamid, Julia; Pfeffer, Stefan; Schaffer, Miroslava; Villa, Elizabeth; Danev, Radostin; Kuhn Cuellar, Luis; Förster, Friedrich; Hyman, Anthony A.; Plitzko, Jürgen M.; Baumeister, Wolfgang (2016). "Visualizing the molecular sociology at the HeLa cell nuclear periphery". Science. 351 (6276): 969–972. Bibcode:2016Sci...351..969M. doi:10.1126/science.aad8857. PMID   26917770. S2CID   206645446.
  6. Toro-Nahuelpan, Mauricio; Zagoriy, Ievgeniia; Senger, Fabrice; Blanchoin, Laurent; Théry, Manuel; Mahamid, Julia (2020). "Tailoring cryo-electron microscopy grids by photo-micropatterning for in-cell structural studies". Nature Methods. 17 (1): 50–54. doi:10.1038/s41592-019-0630-5. PMC   6949126 . PMID   31740821.
  7. Lucas, Bronwyn A.; Himes, Benjamin A.; Xue, Liang; Grant, Timothy; Mahamid, Julia; Grigorieff, Nikolaus (2021). "Locating macromolecular assemblies in cells by 2D template matching with cisTEM". eLife. 10: e68946. doi: 10.7554/eLife.68946 . PMC   8219381 . PMID   34114559.
  8. Goetz, Sara K.; Fung, Herman KH; Klumpe, Sven; Zagoriy, Ievgeniia; Hampoelz, Bernhard; Zhang, Xiaojie; Erdmann, Philipp S.; Baumbach, Janina; Müller, Christoph W.; Beck, Martin; Plitzko, Jürgen M.; Mahamid, Julia (2021). "A modular platform for automated cryo-FIB workflows". eLife. 10. doi: 10.7554/eLife.70506 . PMC   8769651 . PMID   34951584.
  9. Jawerth, Louise; Fischer-Friedrich, Elisabeth; Saha, Suropriya; Wang, Jie; Franzmann, Titus; Zhang, Xiaojie; Sachweh, Jenny; Ruer, Martine; Ijavi, Mahdiye; Saha, Shambaditya; Mahamid, Julia; Hyman, Anthony A.; Jülicher, Frank (2020). "Protein condensates as aging Maxwell fluids". Science. 370 (6522): 1317–1323. Bibcode:2020Sci...370.1317J. doi:10.1126/science.aaw4951. PMID   33303613. S2CID   226035825.
  10. Allegretti, Matteo; Zimmerli, Christian E.; Rantos, Vasileios; Wilfling, Florian; Ronchi, Paolo; Fung, Herman K. H.; Lee, Chia-Wei; Hagen, Wim; Turoňová, Beata; Karius, Kai; Börmel, Mandy; Zhang, Xiaojie; Müller, Christoph W.; Schwab, Yannick; Mahamid, Julia; Pfander, Boris; Kosinski, Jan; Beck, Martin (2020). "In-cell architecture of the nuclear pore and snapshots of its turnover". Nature. 586 (7831): 796–800. Bibcode:2020Natur.586..796A. doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2670-5. hdl: 21.11116/0000-0006-F3B5-B . PMID   32879490. S2CID   221462632.
  11. o'Reilly, Francis J.; Xue, Liang; Graziadei, Andrea; Sinn, Ludwig; Lenz, Swantje; Tegunov, Dimitry; Blötz, Cedric; Singh, Neil; Hagen, Wim J. H.; Cramer, Patrick; Stülke, Jörg; Mahamid, Julia; Rappsilber, Juri (2020). "In-cell architecture of an actively transcribing-translating expressome". Science. 369 (6503): 554–557. Bibcode:2020Sci...369..554O. doi:10.1126/science.abb3758. PMC   7115962 . PMID   32732422.
  12. "Julia Mahamid receives EMBO Gold Medal 2023 – Press releases – EMBO". 6 June 2023.
  13. "CSSB Seminar Series - JULIA MAHAMID".
  14. "Female Rising Stars, Dr. Julia Mahamid, Group Leader, Structural and Computational Biology Unit, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany".
  15. "CryoEM Seminar @ITQB NOVA - Julia Mahamid".
  16. "iNEXT-Discovery hands-on workshop: cryo-FIB lamella preparation & cryo electron tomography - Sciencesconf.org". inextfibet.sciencesconf.org. Retrieved 27 November 2023.
  17. "In situ structural biology: From cryo-EM to multi-scale modelling – Course and Conference Office".
  18. "Cryo-EM in academia and industry – Course and Conference Office".
  19. "2023 Three Dimensional Electron Microscopy Conference GRC".
  20. "Seeing is Believing: Imaging the Molecular Processes of Life – Course and Conference Office".
  21. "Julia Mahamid, PhD - Editorial Board - Journal of Structural Biology - Journal - Elsevier".
  22. https://erc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/document/file/erc_2017_stg_results_ls.pdf
  23. "In situ Structural Analysis of Molecular Crowding and Phase Separation | 3DCellPhase- Project | Fact Sheet | H2020".
  24. Marx, Vivien (2021). "Julia Mahamid". Nature Methods. 18 (2): 117. doi:10.1038/s41592-021-01063-0. PMID   33542512. S2CID   231820823.
  25. "Hybrid Technologies for Structural Cell Biology at Near-Atomic Resolution".
  26. "Illuminating protein complexes in cells". 18 June 2021.
  27. "EMBO Gold Medal 2023 awarded to ERC grantee".