ArticleActa crystallographica. Section D, Structural biology2022
A case for glycerol as an acceptable additive for single-particle cryoEM samples.
Article in Acta crystallographica. Section D, Structural biology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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.
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.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Whole-Cell Glycerol-free Fluorescence Cryo-Spectroscopy Reveals Electronic Excitation Dynamics in the DiatomJACS Au · 2026Article
- Integrated fluorescence light microscopy-guided cryo-focused ion beam-milling for in situ montage cryo-ET.Nature protocols · 2026Review
- DM: a simple solution to suppress air-water interface interactions in cryo-EM.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- A Surfactant Cocktail Overcomes Air-Water Interface Artifacts in Single-Particle CryoEM.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- In situ structure of bacterial 50S ribosomes at 3.0 Å resolution from vitreous sections.Communications biology · 2025Article
- CryoSift: an accessible and automated CNN-driven tool for cryo-EM 2D class selection.Acta crystallographica. Section F, Structural biology communications · 2025Article
- RNA aptamers as tools for the purification and analysis of in vivo assembled ribonucleoproteins.RNA (New York, N.Y.) · 2025Review
- A large-scale curated and filterable dataset for cryo-EM foundation model pre-training.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Self-assembled superstructure alleviates air-water interface effect in cryo-EM.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Cryo-EM sample preparation for high-resolution structure studies.Acta crystallographica. Section F, Structural biology communications · 2024Article
- Ultrastructure of human brain tissue vitrified from autopsy revealed by cryo-ET with cryo-plasma FIB milling.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Using cryo-EM to uncover mechanisms of bacterial transcriptional regulation.Biochemical Society transactions · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Buffer-composition and sample-preparation guidelines for cryo-electron microscopy are geared towards maximizing imaging contrast and reducing electron-beam-induced motion. These pursuits often involve the minimization or the complete removal of additives that are commonly used to facilitate proper protein folding and minimize aggregation. Among these admonished additives is glycerol, a widely used osmolyte that aids protein stability. In this work, it is shown that the inclusion of glycerol does not preclude high-resolution structure determination by cryoEM, as demonstrated by an ∼2.3 Å resolution reconstruction of mouse apoferritin (∼500 kDa) and an ∼3.3 Å resolution reconstruction of rabbit muscle aldolase (∼160 kDa) in the presence of 20%(v/v) glycerol. While it was found that generating thin ice that is amenable to high-resolution imaging requires long blot times, the addition of glycerol did not result in increased beam-induced motion or an inability to pick particles. Overall, these findings indicate that glycerol should not be discounted as a cryoEM sample-buffer additive, particularly for large, fragile complexes that are prone to disassembly or aggregation upon its removal.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.