A new advance in cryo-electron microscopy can reveal highly-detailed structures of protein complexes

The development of the first electron microscopes in the 1930s made it possible to observe cell structures that could not be seen with traditional light microscopes. However, it has only recently become possible to use electron microscopes to study the structural details of individual protein complexes and other macromolecules. Improvements in the technique that have made this breakthrough possible – a technique known as single-particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM; Doerr, 2016) – are a very welcome addition to the other structural tools used in biochemistry and cell biology.
One of the advantages of cryo-EM over other electron microscopy techniques is that samples do not need to be exposed to chemical stains to prepare them for imaging. This means that fragile structures are less likely to undergo modifications before imaging.

https://elifesciences.org/content/5/e16156v1