TY  - JOUR
AU  - Dickerson, Joshua L.
AU  - Lu, Penghan
AU  - Hristov, Dilyan
AU  - Dunin-Borkowski, Rafal
AU  - Russo, Christopher J.
TI  - Imaging biological macromolecules in thick specimens: The role of inelastic scattering in cryoEM
JO  - Ultramicroscopy
VL  - 237
SN  - 0304-3991
CY  - Amsterdam
PB  - Elsevier Science
M1  - FZJ-2022-02039
SP  - 113510 -
PY  - 2022
AB  - We investigate potential improvements in using electron cryomicroscopy to image thick specimens with high-resolution phase contrast imaging. In particular, using model experiments, electron scattering theory, Monte Carlo and multislice simulations, we determine the potential for improving electron cryomicrographs of proteins within a cell using chromatic aberration () correction. We show that inelastically scattered electrons lose a quantifiable amount of spatial coherence as they transit the specimen, yet can be used to enhance the signal from thick biological specimens (in the 1000 to 5000 Å range) provided they are imaged close to focus with an achromatic lens. This loss of information quantified here, which we call “specimen induced decoherence”, is a fundamental limit on imaging biological molecules in situ. We further show that with foreseeable advances in transmission electron microscope technology, it should be possible to directly locate and uniquely identify sub-100 kDa proteins without the need for labels, in a vitrified specimen taken from a cell.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
C6  - pmid:35367900
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000790826100002
DO  - DOI:10.1016/j.ultramic.2022.113510
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/907441
ER  -