Pair Distribution Function from Electron Diffraction in Cryogenic Electron Microscopy: Revealing Glassy Water Structure
In recent years, cryogenic electron microscopy (Cryo-EM) has revolutionized the structure determination of wet samples and especially that of biological macromolecules. The glassy-water medium in which the molecules are embedded is considered an almost in vivo environment for biological samples. The...
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Published in | The journal of physical chemistry letters Vol. 11; no. 4; pp. 1564 - 1569 |
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Main Authors | , , , , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
United States
American Chemical Society
20.02.2020
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Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | In recent years, cryogenic electron microscopy (Cryo-EM) has revolutionized the structure determination of wet samples and especially that of biological macromolecules. The glassy-water medium in which the molecules are embedded is considered an almost in vivo environment for biological samples. The local structure of amorphous ice is known from neutron- and X-ray-diffraction studies, techniques appropriate for much larger volumes than those used in cryo-EM. We here present a first study of the pair-distribution function g(r) of glassy water under cryo-EM conditions using electron diffraction data. We found g(r) to be between that of low-density amorphous ice and that of supercooled water. Under electron exposure, cubic-ice regions were found to nucleate in thicker glassy-water samples. Our work enables to obtain quantitative structural information using g(r) from cryo-EM. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 1948-7185 1948-7185 |
DOI: | 10.1021/acs.jpclett.0c00171 |