Toward single particle reconstruction without particle picking: Breaking the detection limit

Understand

Single-particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) has recently joined X-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy as a high-resolution structural method to resolve biological macromolecules.

• In a cryo-EM experiment, the microscope produces images called micrographs.
• Projections of the molecule of interest are embedded in the micrographs at unknown locations, and under unknown viewing directions.
• Standard imaging techniques first locate these projections (detection) and then reconstruct the 3-D structure from them.