{"id":239057,"date":"2026-06-16T07:26:34","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T12:26:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/beyond-frozen-snapshots-protein-breathing-comes-into-view-with-combined-imaging-methods"},"modified":"2026-06-16T07:26:34","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T12:26:34","slug":"beyond-frozen-snapshots-protein-breathing-comes-into-view-with-combined-imaging-methods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/beyond-frozen-snapshots-protein-breathing-comes-into-view-with-combined-imaging-methods","title":{"rendered":"Beyond frozen snapshots, protein \u2018breathing\u2019 comes into view with combined imaging methods"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/beyond-frozen-snapshots-protein-breathing-comes-into-view-with-combined-imaging-methods2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Advances in structural biology have allowed scientists to determine molecular structures with atomic-level detail, sometimes yielding static snapshots that do not reflect the dynamism of proteins. However, these motions are often crucial for biological function. Researchers from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), together with international collaborators, have now combined several methods to shed light on how proteins \u201cbreathe\u201d and how some experimental techniques freeze their motion. The findings\u2014which could boost protein design approaches and improve AI-based structural prediction tools\u2014are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41557-026-02155-0\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in Nature Chemistry.<\/p>\n<p>Despite serving as structural biology\u2019s central pillar for more than half a century, protein crystallography has yielded static molecular structures\u2014like still frames from a video\u2014far from the buzzing life inside cells.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow much can these \u2018frozen snapshots\u2019 of protein structures really tell us about their true biological functions and bustling molecular environments?\u201d asks Lea Becker, the study\u2019s first author and a Ph.D. student in Professor Paul Schanda\u2019s group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Advances in structural biology have allowed scientists to determine molecular structures with atomic-level detail, sometimes yielding static snapshots that do not reflect the dynamism of proteins. However, these motions are often crucial for biological function. Researchers from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), together with international collaborators, have now combined several methods to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,19,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-chemistry","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}