Serial protein crystallography in an electron microscope

Robert Bücker, Pascal Hogan-Lamarre, Pedram Mehrabi, Eike C. Schulz, Lindsey A. Bultema, Yaroslav Gevorkov, Wolfgang Brehm, Oleksandr Yefanov, Dominik Oberthür, Günther H. Kassier and R. J. Dwayne Miller ()
Additional contact information
Robert Bücker: CFEL
Pascal Hogan-Lamarre: CFEL
Pedram Mehrabi: CFEL
Eike C. Schulz: CFEL
Lindsey A. Bultema: CFEL
Yaroslav Gevorkov: DESY
Wolfgang Brehm: DESY
Oleksandr Yefanov: DESY
Dominik Oberthür: DESY
Günther H. Kassier: CFEL
R. J. Dwayne Miller: CFEL

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Serial X-ray crystallography at free-electron lasers allows to solve biomolecular structures from sub-micron-sized crystals. However, beam time at these facilities is scarce, and involved sample delivery techniques are required. On the other hand, rotation electron diffraction (MicroED) has shown great potential as an alternative means for protein nano-crystallography. Here, we present a method for serial electron diffraction of protein nanocrystals combining the benefits of both approaches. In a scanning transmission electron microscope, crystals randomly dispersed on a sample grid are automatically mapped, and a diffraction pattern at fixed orientation is recorded from each at a high acquisition rate. Dose fractionation ensures minimal radiation damage effects. We demonstrate the method by solving the structure of granulovirus occlusion bodies and lysozyme to resolutions of 1.55 Å and 1.80 Å, respectively. Our method promises to provide rapid structure determination for many classes of materials with minimal sample consumption, using readily available instrumentation.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-14793-0 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-14793-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-14793-0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().