MicroED opens a new era for biological structure determination
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Updated: Mar 14, 2026

Single Particle Cryo-Electron Microscopy: From Sample to Structure
Published on: May 29, 2021
Brent L Nannenga1, Tamir Gonen2
1Chemical Engineering, School for Engineering of Matter, Transport, and Energy, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA.
Abstract:
In 2013 we unveiled the cryo-electron microscopy (CryoEM) method of MicroED, or three-dimensional (3D) electron diffraction of microscopic crystals. Here tiny 3D crystals of biological material are used in an electron microscope for diffraction data collection under cryogenic conditions. The data is indexed, integrated, merged and scaled using standard X-ray crystallography software to determine structures at atomic resolution. In this review we provide an overview of the MicroED method and compare it with other CryoEM methods.
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