@AFC_cristal
L'Association Européenne de Cristallographie (ECA) organise depuis 2021 des "webinaires déjeuner". Les groupes d'intérêt spéciaux (SIG) et les groupes d'intérêt général (GIG) de l'ECA organisent à tour de rôle un webinaire adapté à la communauté des cristallographes au sens large. Le douzième webinaire sera diffusé le 2 juin 2022 à 13h et s'inscrit dans le thème de SIG-1 - Macromolecular crystallography. Le thème de ce webinaire est Atomic-resolution structure determination of proteins by cryo-EM: where are the limits? (Holger Stark, Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences, Göttingen, Germany). Inscriptions ici.
The technological advances in electron microscopy, in detector development and in available image processing tools made cryo-EM a highly successful and rapidly developing method for protein structure determination. The number of structures determined by cryo-EM is currently still growing exponentially and the resolution limit of the technique has constantly been improved over the last decade. We have determined the first true-atomic resolution structure of apoferritin by cryo-EM in which individual atoms are clearly resolved. However, at very high resolution, quality issues in cryo-EM density maps also become apparent. Microscope instrumentation plays a key role with respect to map resolution and map quality. Therefore, I will discuss the resolution limiting factors in cryo-EM and how these limitations can potentially be overcome in the future.
