Background
Cryo-EM single-particle analyses typically require target macromolecule concentration at 0.05∼5.0 mg/ml, which is often difficult to achieve. Magnetic Isolation and Concentration (MagIC)-cryo-EM is a technique that enables direct structural analysis of targets captured on magnetic beads, thereby reducing the targets’ concentration requirement to < 0.0005 mg/ml (Fig A). The MagIC-cryo-EM uses functionalized beads that consist of acer modules and target-capturing modules (Fig B).
MagIC-cryo-EM 101 Table of Contents
- Materials
- Spacer protein purification
- Mono-SPYtag-Streptavidin tetramer purification
- MagIC-cryo-EM beads preparation
- MagIC-cryo-EM beads quality assessment
- MagIC-cryo-EM experiment
- MagIC-cryo-EM data collection (to be updated)
- MagIC-cryo-EM analysis with sample data (will be added)
- Troubleshooting and updates (we will continue to update this page)
- FAQ
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Acknowledgememt
This page was designed by Antonio Latimore in the Communications & Marketing department at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and maintained by Katrina Akioka and other members in the Arimura lab at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center.
The Original paper of MagIC-cryo-EM, has been published (Arimura Y, Konishi HA, Funabiki H. Elife. 2025). The MagIC-cryo-EM method was developed in the Funabiki lab at the Rockefeller University under support from a National Institutes of Health grant (R35GM132111) awarded to H.F., a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Overseas Research Fellowship awarded to H.A.K., and the Osamu Hayaishi Memorial Scholarship for Study Abroad awarded to Y.A. This research was also supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) as part of its grant to the SNF Institute for Global Infectious Disease Research at The Rockefeller University.
We are grateful to Mark Ebrahim, Johanna Sotiris, and Honkit Ng for their technical advice and assistance with Cryo-EM. We also thank Genzhe Lu and Daniil Tagaev for their contributions to optimizing MagIC-cryo-EM. We extend our thanks to Seth Darst, Elizabeth Campbell, Thomas Huber, Michael Rout, Peter Fridy, Christopher Caffalette, Trevor Van Eeuwen, Hiro Furukawa, Sue Biggins, Daniel Barrero, and Mengqiu Jiang for their valuable consultations on the project.
The test data were collected at the Arimura Lab and the Electron Microscopy Facility at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. We are grateful to Melody Campbell, Theo Humphreys, and Anvesh Dasari for establishing and operating the Cryo-EM equipment.