Looking at the precise three-dimensional arrangement
of atoms within a protein helps us to understand how it can perform
its functions. Although electron cryo-microscopy (cryo-EM) has
developed rapidly as an important structural biology technique in
recent years, X-ray crystallography had been the only technique
able to visualize individual atoms. Radu Aricescu’s and Sjors
Scheres’ groups at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, in
collaboration with scientists at Thermo Fisher Scientific and
elsewhere, have now been able to resolve individual protein atoms
for the first time in a three-dimensional cryo-EM
image.
Scientists break resolution records to visualize individual
atoms with single-particle cryo-EM
