Sjors Hendrik Willem Scheres, PhD

Sjors’ group develops methods for cryo-EM structure determination in their open-source software RELION, and they use these methods to solve structures of amyloid filaments. Sjors developed a Bayesian framework for cryo-EM reconstruction that has become the field-wide standard. In 2013, they pioneered reconstructions of sufficient resolution to build atomic models de novo using a direct electron detector. In 2020, they reached the milestone of atomic resolution for apo-ferritin. Their helical reconstruction methods have led to a new era of amyloid structure determination by cryo-EM. In 2017, with Michel Goedert, they reported the structures of tau filaments from the brain of an individual with Alzheimer's disease. Since then, they have solved structures of tau, α-synuclein, amyloid-b and TMEM-106B filaments from multiple diseases, revealing that specific folds characterise different diseases. Recently, they have started the exploration of model systems that replicate the disease-specific structures.