AUTOMATIC STRUCTURE INTERPRETATION OF SINGLE PARTICLE CRYO-ELECTRON MICROSCOPY: FROM IMAGES TO PSUEDO-ATOMIC MODELS

摘要

Three dimensional Electron Microscopy (EM) and in particular single particle reconstruction using cryo-EM, has rapidly advanced over recent years, such that increasingly several macromolecular complexes can be resolved at subnanometer resolution (6–10 Å). This paper reviews some of the main volumetric image and geometric post-processing steps once a three dimensional EM map (henceforth a 3D map) has been reconstructed from single particle Cryo-EM, as essential steps in an enhanced and automated computational structure interpretation pipeline. In particular the paper addresses automated filtering, critical point calculations, symmetric and non-symmetric molecular domain segmentation, molecular surface selection, curation, and protein secondary structure (α- helices and β-sheets) elucidation from 3D maps.