Evidence map›Paper›PMID 31709065›Full record

ArticleIUCrJ2019

A comparative study of single-particle cryo-EM with liquid-nitrogen and liquid-helium cooling.

Olivia Pfeil-Gardiner, Deryck J Mills, Janet Vonck, Werner Kuehlbrandt

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in IUCrJ, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
9citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

9 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Review
  2. Reducing the effects of radiation damage in cryo-EM using liquid helium temperatures.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
  3. Review
  4. CryomicroscopyFaraday discussions · 2022
    Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. Forty years in cryoEM of membrane proteins.Microscopy (Oxford, England) · 2022
    Article
  8. Review
  9. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Olivia Pfeil-GardinerDepartment of Structural Biology, Max Planck Institute of Biophysics, Max-von-Laue-Strasse 3, 60438 Frankfurt, Germany.
Deryck J MillsDepartment of Structural Biology, Max Planck Institute of Biophysics, Max-von-Laue-Strasse 3, 60438 Frankfurt, Germany.
Janet VonckDepartment of Structural Biology, Max Planck Institute of Biophysics, Max-von-Laue-Strasse 3, 60438 Frankfurt, Germany.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5659-8863
Werner KuehlbrandtDepartment of Structural Biology, Max Planck Institute of Biophysics, Max-von-Laue-Strasse 3, 60438 Frankfurt, Germany.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Radiation damage is the most fundamental limitation for achieving high resolution in electron cryo-microscopy (cryo-EM) of biological samples. The effects of radiation damage are reduced by liquid-helium cooling, although the use of liquid helium is more challenging than that of liquid nitrogen. To date, the benefits of liquid-nitrogen and liquid-helium cooling for single-particle cryo-EM have not been compared quantitatively. With recent technical and computational advances in cryo-EM image recording and processing, such a comparison now seems timely. This study aims to evaluate the relative merits of liquid-helium cooling in present-day single-particle analysis, taking advantage of direct electron detectors. Two data sets for recombinant mouse heavy-chain apoferritin cooled with liquid-nitrogen or liquid-helium to 85 or 17 K were collected, processed and compared. No improvement in terms of resolution or Coulomb potential map quality was found for liquid-helium cooling. Interestingly, beam-induced motion was found to be significantly higher with liquid-helium cooling, especially within the most valuable first few frames of an exposure, thus counteracting any potential benefit of better cryoprotection that liquid-helium cooling may offer for single-particle cryo-EM.

Indexed as

apoferritinbeam-induced motionbeam-induced movementcryo-EMelectron cryo-microscopyheliumliquid-helium coolingradiation damage

Identifiers

PMID31709065
PMCPMC6830223

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.