Advances in Electron Diffraction of Three-Dimensional Microcrystals

Crystallography has been an invaluable tool for studying the function of biomolecules on the atomic scale. Because creating large well-ordered crystals necessary for X-ray crystallography is still a major hurdle, there has been a great deal of interest in developing new methods that can provide diffraction data from microcrystals. Previously, we reported on a new technique, called MicroED, which uses electron diffraction in a cryo-transmission electron microscope to obtain structural data from extremely small three-dimensional microcrystals. In this presentation I will present on the major advances since the initial work was presented. These advances include improved sample preparation methods and new protein structures, some which could only be solved by MicroED.