ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2025
Outrunning protein diffusion to the air-water interface in cryoEM.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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The trial behind it
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Who cites it
2 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
- Two datasets are better than one: method of double moments for 3D reconstruction in cryo-EM.Inverse problems · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Here, we report a series of measurements indicating that it is physically possible to thin and vitrify a specimen for electron cryomicroscopy (cryoEM) faster than proteins diffuse to the air-water interface. We achieved this by spraying picoliter volume droplets at speeds of hundreds of meters per second into a thin layer of liquid ethane coating the surface of a precooled specimen support. The droplets simultaneously collapsed and froze in microseconds into the amorphous phase as they landed on the surface. The atomic structure of the proteins was preserved and tomographic reconstructions of the vitrified specimens indicated adhesion to the interfaces was eliminated. Improved control of the final thickness of the specimen and the orientation distribution of the particles are now the limiting factors. This demonstration provides a basis for the development of specimen preparation methods and instruments that eliminate the detrimental effects of the air-water interface in cryoEM.
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