Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Cryo-electron Microscopy

Cryo-electron Microscopy

Conventional electron microscopy (EM) involves dehydration, fixation, and staining of biological samples, which distorts the native state of biological molecules and results in several artifacts. Also, the high-energy electron beam damages the sample and makes it difficult to obtain high-resolution images. These issues can be addressed using cryo-EM, which uses frozen samples and gentler electron beams. The technique was developed by Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank, and Richard Henderson, for...

Electron Microscope Tomography and Single-particle Reconstruction

Electron Microscope Tomography and Single-particle Reconstruction

Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) can be used to determine the 3D structure of biological samples with the help of techniques such as electron microscope tomography and single-particle reconstruction. While single-particle reconstruction can examine macromolecules and macromolecular complexes in vitro conditions only, tomography permits the study of cell components or small cells in vivo.
Electron Tomography
Electron tomography can be performed either in TEM or STEM (scanning transmission...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Characterization and modulation of human insulin degrading enzyme conformational dynamics to control enzyme activity.

eLife·2026

Same author

Characterization Standard for <i>In-situ</i> Cryo-electron Tomography.

bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology·2026

Same author

AreTomoLive: automated reconstruction of comprehensively corrected and denoised cryo-electron tomograms in real time and at high throughput.

Nature methods·2026

Same author

Myosin forces remodel F-actin for mechanosensitive protein recognition.

Nature·2026

Same author

copick: An open dataset interface and toolkit for collaborative annotation and analysis of cryo-electron tomography data.

Protein science : a publication of the Protein Society·2026

Same author

Cryo-EM Structure of Human ATAD2B Reveals a Hexameric Organization Contributes to ATPase Activity and Substrate Coordination.

bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology·2026

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Sep 29, 2025

Cryo-Electron Tomography Remote Data Collection and Subtomogram Averaging

Cryo-Electron Tomography Remote Data Collection and Subtomogram Averaging

Published on: July 12, 2022

Better, Faster, Cheaper: Recent Advances in Cryo-Electron Microscopy.

Eugene Y D Chua^1,2,3, Joshua H Mendez^1,2,3, Micah Rapp^1,2

¹New York Structural Biology Center, New York, NY, USA; email: echua@nysbc.org, jmendez@nysbc.org, mrapp@nysbc.org, silca@nysbc.org, kmaruthi@nysbc.org, hkuang@nysbc.org, czimanyi@nysbc.org, acheng@nysbc.org, eeng@nysbc.org, anoble@nysbc.org, cpotter@nysbc.org, bcarr@nysbc.org.

Annual Review of Biochemistry

|March 23, 2022

Summary

Advances in cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) enhance biological imaging. These improvements enable faster, higher-resolution visualization of molecular structures, aiding in critical research like COVID-19 antibody development.

Keywords:

SARS-CoV-2 automation cryo-EM democratization in situ tomography machine learning

More Related Videos

Manual Blot-and-Plunge Freezing of Biological Specimens for Single-Particle Cryogenic Electron Microscopy

Manual Blot-and-Plunge Freezing of Biological Specimens for Single-Particle Cryogenic Electron Microscopy

Published on: February 7, 2022

Single-Particle Cryo-EM Data Collection with Stage Tilt using Leginon

Single-Particle Cryo-EM Data Collection with Stage Tilt using Leginon

Published on: July 1, 2022

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Sep 29, 2025

Cryo-Electron Tomography Remote Data Collection and Subtomogram Averaging

Cryo-Electron Tomography Remote Data Collection and Subtomogram Averaging

Published on: July 12, 2022

Manual Blot-and-Plunge Freezing of Biological Specimens for Single-Particle Cryogenic Electron Microscopy

Manual Blot-and-Plunge Freezing of Biological Specimens for Single-Particle Cryogenic Electron Microscopy

Published on: February 7, 2022

Single-Particle Cryo-EM Data Collection with Stage Tilt using Leginon

Single-Particle Cryo-EM Data Collection with Stage Tilt using Leginon

Published on: July 1, 2022

Area of Science:

Structural biology
Biophysics
Biochemistry

Background:

Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is a powerful technique for visualizing biological macromolecules at near-atomic resolution.
Recent technological advancements have significantly improved the speed, accessibility, and resolution of cryo-EM.
Developments span the entire cryo-EM workflow, from sample preparation to data analysis.

Purpose of the Study:

To review recent key advancements in the cryo-electron microscopy pipeline.
To illustrate the application of these advanced cryo-EM techniques in solving real-world biological problems.
To highlight the impact of cryo-EM on fields such as infectious disease research.

Main Methods:

Single-particle analysis (SPA) improvements
In situ cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) developments
Advances in data processing and image analysis algorithms

Main Results:

Enhanced resolution and speed in determining molecular structures.
Increased accessibility of cryo-EM technology to a broader scientific community.
Successful application in understanding viral structures, such as the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

Conclusions:

Cryo-EM continues its rapid evolution, offering unprecedented insights into biological systems.
Technological progress in cryo-EM is accelerating discoveries in structural biology and medicine.
The method is crucial for addressing urgent global health challenges, exemplified by its role in vaccine and therapeutic development.