MicroED Explained: A Powerful Tool for Small Molecule Structure Determination

This session is part of our "Beyond the Scope: CEMAS Discussion Series."
Micro-Electron Diffraction (MicroED) is an exciting new method in cryo-EM for the structure determination of nano-sized crystals. Crystals are continuously tilted in the electron microscope while recording diffraction information. MicroED is well suited to produce structural information of proteins and small molecules. The use of nano-sized crystals overcomes a major bottleneck in X-ray crystallography, which requires micron-sized crystals or larger. Furthermore, microED data analysis exploits already existing analysis programs that were originally written for X-ray diffraction. During the talk, we will describe the basic method, review the experimental workflow, and detail some recently determined structures.