ArticleNature communications2024
Small LEA proteins mitigate air-water interface damage to fragile cryo-EM samples during plunge freezing.
Article in Nature communications, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed.
- Direct deposition on pre-cooled grids: a new approach to sub-millisecond cryoEM grid preparation.Acta crystallographica. Section D, Structural biology · 2026Article
- Protein Engineering-Enabled Cryo-EM Investigation of Small GTPases.Journal of molecular biology · 2026Article
- Overcoming air-water interface-induced artifacts in cryo-EM with protein nanocrates.Nature methods · 2026Article
- Diversifying particle-orientation distributions in cryo-EM with LEA protein additives.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Expression of tardigrade extremotolerance-associated proteins improves recovery but not acute stress response of human microvascular endothelial cells.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Haplotype-resolved telomere-to-telomere genome ofGenome research · 2026Article
- DM: a simple solution to suppress air-water interface interactions in cryo-EM.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Strategic advances for cryo-EM structural studies of small (<100 kDa) GPCRs.Communications biology · 2026Review
- Advances in Crystallography and Cryo-Electron Microscopy for the Study of Membrane Proteins.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2026Review
- Structural flexibility of a recombinant intrinsically disordered LEA protein from Ramonda serbica.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Overcoming air-water interface-induced artifacts in Cryo-EM with protein nanocrates.Research square · 2025Article
- Laser flash melting cryo-EM samples to overcome preferred orientation.Nature methods · 2025Article
- Foam film vitrification for cryo-EM.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Structure and biochemistry-guided engineering of an all-RNA system for DNA insertion with R2 retrotransposons.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Advances in cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM) for structure-based drug discovery.Expert opinion on drug discovery · 2025Review
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Abstract
Air-water interface (AWI) interactions during cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) sample preparation cause significant sample loss, hindering structural biology research. Organisms like nematodes and tardigrades produce Late Embryogenesis Abundant (LEA) proteins to withstand desiccation stress. Here we show that these LEA proteins, when used as additives during plunge freezing, effectively mitigate AWI damage to fragile multi-subunit molecular samples. The resulting high-resolution cryo-EM maps are comparable to or better than those obtained using existing AWI damage mitigation methods. Cryogenic electron tomography reveals that particles are localized at specific interfaces, suggesting LEA proteins form a barrier at the AWI. This interaction may explain the observed sample-dependent preferred orientation of particles. LEA proteins offer a simple, cost-effective, and adaptable approach for cryo-EM structural biologists to overcome AWI-related sample damage, potentially revitalizing challenging projects and advancing the field of structural biology.
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