Direct from the Seed: An Atomic-Resolution Protein Structure by Ab Initio MicroED.

ABSTRACT: While purifying the seed protein crambin, we discovered that needles of pure protein nanocrystals formed spontaneously during the drying of a simple ethanolic purification drop. Contrary to traditional crystallography, these needles diffracted poorly using X-rays yet proved to be exceptionally well-suited for microcrystal electron diffraction (MicroED). By merging data from 58 such nanocrystals, we obtained diffraction to 0.85 Å resolution with an overall correlation coefficient of over 99% and solved the structure ab initio using a five-residue helical fragment to initiate density modification. The resulting map was of exceptional quality, enabling fully automated model building and resolving individual hydrogen atoms. This work represents the highest-resolution protein structure (

SUBMITTER: Vasireddy PCR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12236495 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature