Applications and prospects of cryo-EM in drug discovery.

Drug discovery is a crucial part of human healthcare and has dramatically benefited human lifespan and life quality in recent centuries, however, it is usually time- and effort-consuming. Structural biology has been demonstrated as a powerful tool to accelerate drug development. Among different techniques, cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is emerging as the mainstream of structure determination of biomacromolecules in the past decade and has received increasing attention from the pharmaceutical industry.

The structure of a complex of the lactonohydrolase zearalenone hydrolase with the hydrolysis product of zearalenone at 1.60 Å resolution.

Zearalenone hydrolase (ZHD) is an α/β-hydrolase that detoxifies and degrades the lactone zearalenone (ZEN), a naturally occurring oestrogenic mycotoxin that contaminates crops. Several apoenzyme and enzyme-substrate complex structures have been reported in the resolution range 2.4-2.