3 ms·

So in some sense that's what this is all about. The resolution of an electron microsocope is dependant on the energy of the electron, but higher energy electro

So in some sense that's what this is all about. The resolution of an electron microsocope is dependant on the energy of the electron, but higher energy electrons rip your sample apart. The trick that cryo-em does is to stiffen the structure of the protein by embedding it in a glass matrix (the glass is actually just really cold water that is prevented from freezing). Since the protein is stiff, you can use higher energy electrons, and thus get a higher resolution.

cinquemb 6y ago
Are things besides water used? Like a vacuum or something else? Would the stiffness be dependent on the energy density gradient between what it is embedded in? The technique reminds of those i've seen in sparse eigen decomposition of a matrix, where some non square matrix X is embedded in a larger sparse matrix of zeros of the form: ⎡ zeros(X.n_rows, X.n_rows) X ⎤ ⎣ X.t() zeros(X.n_cols, X.n_cols) ⎦ Except for in this case the larger matrix of zeros would be replaced by a repeated structure. Though I can't help but think that using non zeros would get some weird energy feedbacks (due to the interaction of the protein with the embedding matrix molecules) that would require some renormalizations.