BioCentury
ARTICLE | Tools & Techniques

Cryo-EM a river

As cryo-EM races forward, companies are partnering to keep up

July 14, 2016 7:00 AM UTC

Once considered the poor cousin in structural biology, cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) has found new favor in industry, after technical improvements have broken barriers in molecular size and resolution, resulting in floods of data that can support better drug design. Now, close collaboration between academics and companies, including hardware and software developers, promises to unlock a wide array of therapeutically relevant structures that have eluded other approaches.

Cryo-EM involves firing electrons at flash-frozen molecules. Those electrons pass through a molecule's empty spaces and bounce off its dense areas, producing a scattering pattern that is used to deduce the molecule's structure. ...