Seeing Atoms: Single-Particle Cryo-EM Breaks the Atomic Barrier

Yong Zi Tan; Bridget Carragher

doi:10.1016/j.molcel.2020.11.043

Seeing Atoms: Single-Particle Cryo-EM Breaks the Atomic Barrier

Mol Cell. 2020 Dec 17;80(6):938-939. doi: 10.1016/j.molcel.2020.11.043.

Authors

Yong Zi Tan¹, Bridget Carragher²

Affiliations

¹ Molecular Medicine Program, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON M5G 0A4, Canada.
² National Resource for Automated Molecular Microscopy, Simons Electron Microscopy Center, New York Structural Biology Center, New York, NY 10027, USA; Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA. Electronic address: bcarr@nysbc.org.

PMID: 33338409
DOI: 10.1016/j.molcel.2020.11.043

Abstract

The goal of structural biology is to understand biological macromolecules in as much detail as possible. Depending on the resolution of the structure obtained, insights will range from understanding interactions at the level of proteins, domains, or atoms. The three mainstay structural biology techniques are X-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging, and cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM). Cryo-EM has rapidly gained popularity in recent years due to a combination of hardware and software advances, leading to the so-called Resolution Revolution (Kühlbrandt, 2014).

Publication types

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Cryoelectron Microscopy*
Crystallography, X-Ray
Imaging, Three-Dimensional
Molecular Biology / methods*
Proteins / ultrastructure*
Software

Substances

Proteins