| REVOLUTIONARY MICROSCOPY TECHNIQUE SEES INDIVIDUAL ATOMS FOR FIRST TIME |
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The cryo-electron microscopy breakthrough, reported by two laboratories late last month, will ultimately help researchers to understand how proteins work in health and disease, and will lead to better drugs with fewer side effects. "It's really a milestone, that's for sure. There's really nothing to break anymore. This was the last resolution barrier," says biochemist and electron microscopist Holger Stark. See proteins' individual atoms for first time. A game-changing technique for imaging molecules has produced its sharpest pictures yet, and, for the first time, has discerned individual atoms in a protein. F: Nature 582, 156-157 (2020)
Cryo-electron microscopy of proteins such as this β-galaxtosidase enzyme has progressed from the low-resolution density map on the left to the atomic coordinates on the right. |
