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Description
Single-particle EM 3D reconstruction comprises two aspects: data acquisition and data analysis. While “data analysis” aims to extract as much information as possible from noisy raw images, “data acquisition” strives to maximize the amount of information in data recording.
Electron scattering cross-sections of heavy atoms quantitatively differ from light atoms (namely C, N, O) abundant in protein molecules, and this physical property endorses enhanced amplitude contrast in cryo-EM. Here we demonstrate that a 45 kDa copper storage protein (CSP) can be visualized by single-particle cryo-EM without phase-plate imaging and its density map has been reconstructed to 3.5 Å resolution upon multiset-CTF correction. The Z-contrast enhancement technique has broader applications in single-particle EM structural biology.
