Pushing the resolution limit by correcting the Ewald sphere effect in single-particle Cryo-EM reconstructions

Authors

Dongjie Zhu, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Xiangxi Wang, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Qianglin Fang, Purdue University
James L. Van Etten, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Michael G. Rossmann, Purdue University
Zihe Rao, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
Xinzheng Zhang, Chinese Academy of Sciences

ORCID IDs

0000-0002-5052-1782

Date of this Version

2018

Citation

NATURE COMMUNICATIONS | (2018) 9:1552

Comments

© The Author(s) 2018

Open access

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-04051-9

Abstract

The Ewald sphere effect is generally neglected when using the Central Projection Theorem for cryo electron microscopy single-particle reconstructions. This can reduce the resolution of a reconstruction. Here we estimate the attainable resolution and report a “block-based” reconstruction method for extending the resolution limit. We find the Ewald sphere effect limits the resolution of large objects, especially large viruses. After processing two real datasets of large viruses, we show that our procedure can extend the resolution for both datasets and can accommodate the flexibility associated with large protein complexes.