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Updated: Feb 11, 2026

Cryo-EM and Single-Particle Analysis with Scipion
Published on: May 29, 2021
Pushing the resolution limit by correcting the Ewald sphere effect in single-particle Cryo-EM reconstructions
Dongjie Zhu1,2, Xiangxi Wang1, Qianglin Fang3
1National Laboratory of Biomacromolecules, CAS Center for Excellence in Biomacromolecules, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100101, Beijing, China.
Abstract:
The Ewald sphere effect is generally neglected when using the Central Projection Theorem for cryo electron microscopy single-particle reconstructions. This can reduce the resolution of a reconstruction. Here we estimate the attainable resolution and report a "block-based" reconstruction method for extending the resolution limit. We find the Ewald sphere effect limits the resolution of large objects, especially large viruses. After processing two real datasets of large viruses, we show that our procedure can extend the resolution for both datasets and can accommodate the flexibility associated with large protein complexes.
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