Biologist Joey Davis explores how cells build complex structures

Key Points:

• MIT Associate Professor Joey Davis studies the complex assembly and breakdown of ribosomes, cellular machines responsible for protein synthesis, aiming to understand their rapid and flexible construction processes.
• His research reveals that ribosome assembly is dynamic and non-linear, allowing cells to skip and revisit steps, contrasting with the rigid, sequential nature of human-made assembly lines.
• Davis’ background includes work on protein degradation enzymes and synthetic biology, with experience at Ginkgo Bioworks and Scripps Research, where he utilized advanced cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) techniques.
• Using cryo-EM and neural network-based methods like CryoDRGN, Davis’ lab captures detailed, diverse ribosome assembly structures, highlighting multiple assembly pathways and the efficiency of the process in bacteria.
• Future goals include increasing cryo-EM throughput to generate extensive protein structure datasets, which could enhance AI models for predicting protein structures, especially in poorly understood sequence spaces.