Title: Uniform thin ice on ultraflat graphene for high-resolution cryo-EM
Author: Zheng, Liming, Liu, Nan, Gao, Xiaoyin, Zhu, Wenqing, Liu, Kun, Wu, Cang, Yan, Rui, Zhang, Jincan, Gao, Xin, Yao, Yating, Deng, Bing, Xu, Jie, Lu, Ye, Liu, Zhongmin, Li, Mengsen, Wei, Xiaoding, Wang, Hong-Wei, Peng, Hailin
Issue&Volume: 2022-12-15
Abstract: Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) visualizes the atomic structure of macromolecules that are embedded in vitrified thin ice at their close-to-native state. However, the homogeneity of ice thickness, a key factor to ensure high image quality, is poorly controlled during specimen preparation and has become one of the main challenges for high-resolution cryo-EM. Here we found that the uniformity of thin ice relies on the surface flatness of the supporting film, and developed a method to use ultraflat graphene (UFG) as the support for cryo-EM specimen preparation to achieve better control of vitreous ice thickness. We show that the uniform thin ice on UFG improves the image quality of vitrified specimens. Using such a method we successfully determined the three-dimensional structures of hemoglobin (64kDa), α-fetoprotein (67kDa) with no symmetry, and streptavidin (52kDa) at a resolution of 3.5, 2.6 and 2.2, respectively. Furthermore, our results demonstrate the potential of UFG for the fields of cryo-electron tomography and structure-based drug discovery.
DOI: 10.1038/s41592-022-01693-y
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41592-022-01693-y
Nature Methods：《自然—方法学》，创刊于2004年。隶属于施普林格·自然出版集团，最新IF：47.99
官方网址：https://www.nature.com/nmeth/
投稿链接：https://mts-nmeth.nature.com/cgi-bin/main.plex
本期文章：《自然—方法学》：Online/在线发表
