Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2017 Feb;12(2):209-212.
doi: 10.1038/nprot.2017.004. Epub 2017 Jan 5.

Advances in the field of single-particle cryo-electron microscopy over the last decade

Joachim Frank  1
Affiliations
Review

Advances in the field of single-particle cryo-electron microscopy over the last decade

Joachim Frank. Nat Protoc. 2017 Feb.

Abstract

In single-particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), molecules suspended in a thin aqueous layer are rapidly frozen and imaged at cryogenic temperature in the transmission electron microscope. From the random projection views, a three-dimensional image is reconstructed, enabling the structure of the molecule to be obtained. In this article I discuss technological progress over the past decade, which has, in my own field of study, culminated in the determination of ribosome structure at 2.5-Å resolution. I also discuss likely future improvements in methodology.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Grassucci RA, Taylor DJ, Frank J. Preparation of macromolecular complexes for cryo-electron microscopy. Nat Prot. 2007;2:3239–3246. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Grassucci RA, Taylor D, Frank J. Visualization of macromolecular complexes using cryo-electron microscopy with FEI Tecnai transmission electron microscopes. Nat Prot. 2008;3:330–339. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Shaikh TR, Gao H, Baxter WT, Asturias FJ, Boisset N, Leith A, Frank J. SPIDER image processing for single-particle reconstruction of biological macromolecules from electron micrographs. Nat Prot. 2009;3:1941–1974. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Trabuco LG, Villa E, Mitra K, Frank J, Schulten K. Flexible fitting of atomic structures into electron microscopy maps using molecular dynamics. Structure. 2008;16:673–683. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Scheres SHW, Gao H, Valle M, Herman GT, Eggermont PPB, Frank J, Carazo JM. Disentangling conformational states of macromolecules in 3D-EM through likelihood optimization. Nat Meth. 2007;4:27–29. - PubMed

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources