2018Hattne RadiationDamage

Citation

Hattne, J.; Shi, D.; Glynn, C.; Zee, C.-T.; Gallagher-Jones, M.; Martynowycz, M. W.; Rodriguez, J. A. & Gonen, T. Analysis of Global and Site-Specific Radiation Damage in Cryo-EM. Structure, 2018 , 26 , 759-766.e4

Abstract

Micro-crystal electron diffraction (MicroED) combines the efficiency of electron scattering with diffraction to allow structure determination from nano-sized crystalline samples in cryoelectron microscopy (cryo-EM). It has been used to solve structures of a diverse set of biomolecules and materials, in some cases to sub-atomic resolution. However, little is known about the damaging effects of the electron beam on samples during such measurements. We assess global and site-specific damage from electron radiation on nanocrystals of proteinase K and of a prion hepta-peptide and find that the dynamics of electron-induced damage follow well-established trends observed in X-ray crystallography. Metal ions are perturbed, disulfide bonds are broken, and acidic side chains are decarboxylated while the diffracted intensities decay exponentially with increasing exposure. A better understanding of radiation damage in MicroED improves our assessment and processing of all types of cryo-EM data.

Links

https://www.cell.com/structure/abstract/S0969-2126(18)30125-4