[3dem] cell structure atlas

[Jensen, Grant J.]

Dear fellow cryo-EM aficionados,

I’m excited to let you know that Catherine Oikonomou and I have just released a free, online, multimedia, open-access textbook called the Atlas of Bacterial & Archaeal Cell Structure - please see it at  cellstructureatlas.org<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://cellstructureatlas.org__;!!Mih3wA!S53XT69DnfaPWpOSsziyEW_BxoGBY9EgPm-vzfAhiUuU7JmcpsCVVPmg1LzFthrOAA$ >.

As you know, with the development of cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) in the last 20 years, our understanding of bacterial and archaeal cell structure has exploded, but traditional textbooks haven’t kept up with all the new information.  To solve this problem, and share what we’ve seen with the world, we created this book. It follows the tradition of the cell structure atlases of the 1960’s and 1970’s, which showed micrograph after micrograph of different cells and tissues alongside extended figure legends to help everyone understand what they were looking at. Fifty years later, we now have a new set of images - this time 3D cryo-tomograms - and new technologies to show them: instead of static 2D figures in an expensive book, each of our free digital pages features a movie of a 3D tomogram of a cell, complete with segmentations and animations.

The main content can be digested in a few hours and is suitable for an undergraduate cell biology or medical microbiology course, maybe assigned as additional reading to accompany the first few lectures. More advanced readers can go into more depth on a topic through optional “Learn More” buttons. And to keep it free for everyone, we’re publishing it as an open-access textbook through the Caltech Library.

Please check it out at cellstructureatlas.org<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://cellstructureatlas.org__;!!Mih3wA!S53XT69DnfaPWpOSsziyEW_BxoGBY9EgPm-vzfAhiUuU7JmcpsCVVPmg1LzFthrOAA$ > and tell us what you think. If you like it, please share it with your colleagues - making it free is good but it means the book has no marketing team!  We hope it will be a useful resource for as many professors and students as possible. We’ll keep expanding the content and the features, so let us know what you’d like to see added in the future.

Also, please note that for this first edition we used tomograms collected in my lab, but in future editions we want to expand to include many more great cryotomograms from other groups as well, so we hope you’ll work with us to do that!

Cheers and best wishes for the new year!

Grant


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Grant Jensen
Dean, College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
Brigham Young University
801-422-7413
Grant_JensenATbyu.edu<mailto:Grant_Jensen at byu.edu>
office location: N181H Eyring Science Center
https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.jensenlab.caltech.edu__;!!Mih3wA!S53XT69DnfaPWpOSsziyEW_BxoGBY9EgPm-vzfAhiUuU7JmcpsCVVPmg1LxhMxb6BQ$ 

Administrative Assistant Karin Mallard
mallardkATbyu.edu<mailto:mallardk at byu.edu>
801-422-2290
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