Linda E. Franken

Background

About Linda E. Franken

Key Terms: Technology: Advanced imaging across scales:(live-cell) Fluorescence Microscopy; cryo-Electron Microscopy; Single Particle Analysis; FIB-Milling; and cryo-Tomography Key Terms: Scientific interest: Adenovirus ‘life’-cycle inside the human host: Self-Assembly; Viral Assembly; Viral Egress; Latency Establishment; Structural Virology. Scientific drive: Having completed my masters in marine biology, I moved to the field of electron microscopy (EM) where I applied cryoEM and Single Particle Analysis (SPA) to study organic chemistry samples focussing on self-assembly and aggregation processes and biological topics such as the structural mechanism of ribosome dimerization. Now, I work on self-assembly and egress of adenoviruses. The study of viruses provides a great source of fundamental understanding of the workings of a cell, which we gain through the study of the viral mechanisms that ‘high-jack’ and reform existing cellular pathways. For the study of the adenoviral ‘life’-cycle, I apply single particle cryoEM on purified virus and viral proteins to get to the structural details of viral infection, and I visualize the viral infection process in the context of the host cell, by FIB-milling and cryo-tomography.