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Updated: Jun 22, 2026

Single Particle Electron Microscopy Reconstruction of the Exosome Complex Using the Random Conical Tilt Method
Published on: March 28, 2011
Single particle electron microscopy
Egbert J Boekema1, Mihaela Folea, Roman Kouřil
1Biophysical Chemistry, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 4, 9747 AG Groningen, The Netherlands. e.j.boekema@rug.nl
Abstract:
Electron microscopy (EM) in combination with image analysis is a powerful technique to study protein structures at low, medium, and high resolution. Since electron micrographs of biological objects are very noisy, improvement of the signal-to-noise ratio by image processing is an integral part of EM, and this is performed by averaging large numbers of individual projections. Averaging procedures can be divided into crystallographic and non-crystallographic methods. The crystallographic averaging method, based on two-dimensional (2D) crystals of (membrane) proteins, yielded in solving atomic protein structures in the last century. More recently, single particle analysis could be extended to solve atomic structures as well. It is a suitable method for large proteins, viruses, and proteins that are difficult to crystallize. Because it is also a fast method to reveal the low-to-medium resolution structures, the impact of its application is growing rapidly. Technical aspects, results, and possibilities are presented.
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