The work cycle of a biological machine often involves a continuum of conformational states. Single-particle methods are ideally suited to studying conformations as they take individual snapshots of molecules, thus avoid averaging over different states. When successfully applied, single-particle approaches have the capability to compile 3D movies of molecular machines at work. A novel analytic approach, based on manifold embedding, allows model-free, quantitative analysis of the degrees of freedom and the energy landscapes underlying continuous conformational changes. This approach has been successfully applied to cryoEM snapshots. More recently, XFEL has been used to take snapshots from single molecules before they are destroyed by the intense beam. XFEL thus provides a new source of single-particle snapshots for studying conformations and will likely complement the more established cryoEM in the future.

Peter Schwander graduated with his PhD in Physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETHZ), the most prestigious university in Switzerland, and completed postdoctoral studies at AT&T Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. Dr. Schwander returned to Switzerland after completing his postdoctoral work and then joined IHP, a Leibniz Institute for Microelectronics in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany before joining UWM as a Senior Scientist and Adjunct Professor. He worked in that capacity for six years before being promoted to Associate Professor in 2014. In addition to his academic appoints, Dr. Schwander has served as the Vice President for Research and Development at Lesswire AG in Germany.