In 2021 alone, 4,483 cryo-EM structures were deposited in the bank. The boom in cryo-EM-based structure solving took off over the past seven years, thanks to technological advances that not only enhanced its utility as an imaging tool but also made it easier for scientists to use. With developments in microscope technology and enhanced imaging resolution, it started to gain a little traction in the early 2000s, though by 2002, only eight entries were published in the Electron Microscopy Data Bank, a repository scientists use to collate data about molecular structures. All of this adds up to a boon for designing drugs and understanding biology and disease.Ĭryo-EM has been around since the 1980s, though it wasn’t always the master filmmaker scientists know and love today. Researchers can also combine multiple snapshots of a molecule in different conformations, creating movies of how molecules wiggle about, often in different functional states.Ĭryo-EM holds several advantages over other molecular imaging methods: It enables investigation of a wider variety of molecules it allows scientists to see how these molecules exist and act in their natural state or when battling a virus and the process is relatively fast - if all goes according to plan, a scientist can freeze, shoot and create a model of a molecule in a few days. That produces images of the molecule, each viewed from a different direction and each molecule caught, frozen, in a certain shape. Scientists freeze a molecule of interest, pass a beam of electrons through it, and record how the electrons bounce off the molecule. In a nutshell, the cryo-EM process comes down to roughly four steps: Freeze, shoot, detect, reconstruct. Now, an imaging technique known as cryogenic electron microscopy, or cryo-EM, helps researchers decipher molecules’ structures in fine detail, even as they flex, twist and undulate. And so was born a decadeslong quest to capture crisp images of molecules in action.Įarly in the field of molecular imaging, the best depictions of molecules were akin to a blurry Rorschach test, showing the overall shape of a molecule in its crystallized state, but not much else. It’s also a serious challenge for scientists to picture clearly. That molecular jostle is key to how every cell and organ functions. Like all molecules, they are a conglomerate of smaller bits - typically, some combination of oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous, sulfur and hydrogen atoms connected via bonds of varying strength - and they morph as they perform the many jobs upon which human biology depends.Įven when the body is perfectly still, our insides are moving. Some are tubular or spiraled others are long and spindly, or bulbous and squat. All the opinions are 100% my own.The molecules of life - proteins, DNA and RNA - have many looks.

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