Multi-particle Cryo-EM Refinement with M Visualizes Ribosome-antibiotic Complex at 3.5 Å in Cells

Overview

Journal Nat Methods

Specialties Biomedical Engineering
Pathology

Date 2021 Feb 5

PMID 33542511

Citations 190

Authors

Dimitry Tegunov

Liang Xue

Christian Dienemann

Patrick Cramer

Julia Mahamid

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) enables macromolecular structure determination in vitro and inside cells. In addition to aligning individual particles, accurate registration of sample motion and three-dimensional deformation during exposures are crucial for achieving high-resolution reconstructions. Here we describe M, a software tool that establishes a reference-based, multi-particle refinement framework for cryo-EM data and couples a comprehensive spatial deformation model to in silico correction of electron-optical aberrations. M provides a unified optimization framework for both frame-series and tomographic tilt-series data. We show that tilt-series data can provide the same resolution as frame-series data on a purified protein specimen, indicating that the alignment step no longer limits the resolution obtainable from tomographic data. In combination with Warp and RELION, M resolves to residue level a 70S ribosome bound to an antibiotic inside intact bacterial cells. Our work provides a computational tool that facilitates structural biology in cells.

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