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TOPICAL COLLECTIONS

Sample Preparation Methods and Workflow for Cryo-EM
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Guest Editor

Amar Parvate

Amar Parvate

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)

Dr. Amar Parvate obtained his PhD in 2018 from Purdue University. His PHD and postdoctoral research work involved extensive cryo-EM analyses of human pathogenic viruses. He has published 3 papers on methods on inactivation of BSL3/4 viruses to facilitate their TEM and cryo-EM analyses without the need for extensive biosafety requirements. He has worked on high resolution cryo-EM structure determination of antigen-antibody complexes of immunotherapy candidates. He is currently working as a Chemist with the Structural Biology team in the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory at PNNL. His current research involves using biochemistry, cell free protein expression (CPE), along with cryo-EM, cryo-ET and cryo-FIB-SEM to solve structures of macromolecular assemblies of proteins of interest. He is a Daily Operator and custodian of the Titan Krios G3i and the Aquilos2 installed at EMSL. 

Collection Overview

Cryo-electron Microscopy is now a standard technique of choice along with protein crystallography to obtain atomic resolution of macromolecular assemblies, including viruses, either in apo form or complexed with ligands. Any cryo-EM project relies on optimized biochemistry and sample preparation methods including but not limited to plunge freezing or high pressure freezing of samples, potentially thinning biological samples using focused ion beam milling, or utilizing hybrid approaches like cryo-CLEM, micropatterning etc. Recently developed biochemical techniques to be used for preparing samples for cryo-EM include cell free protein expression (CPE) for soluble as well as membrane proteins. While several reports have been published on each of these approaches, it is not possible to include each and every detail of the sample preparation workflow in a word restricted manuscript. Moreover, watching a specialized sample preparation workflow performed by an experienced researcher can help researchers newly venturing into cryo-EM to optimize sample preparation specific for their research. We are also including methods including novel methods of protein or sample purification and grid preparation which lead to improvement in cryo-EM imaging over existing methods. The aim of this Methods Collection is to make available a broad collection of methods that are geared towards any form of cryo-EM sample preparation.

Articles

Optimizing Sample Preparation for Cryogenic Electron Microscopy
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Optimizing Sample Preparation for Cryogenic Electron Microscopy

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2025

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Abstracts

Manual Plunge-Freezing Workflow for Accessible Cryo-EM Grid Preparation and Single-Particle Analysis

Cody Brazel*1,

Dylan Girodat2,

Rose Marie Yasuda3,

Sean Mulligan3

1University of Arkansas,

2University of Lethbridge,

3Pacific Northwest Center for Cryo-EM

Cryo-EM Analysis of Photosynthetic Complexes: From Purification to Data Collection

Antonello Amelii1,

Stefano Capaldi1,

Gennaro Sanita2,

Emanuela Esposito2,

Roberto Bassi*1

1University of Verona, Italy,

2National Research Council - Naples, Italy