Most human proteins remain too small for today’s most powerful biological microscopes to resolve clearly. A laser system developed by UC Berkeley physicists could help bring many of them into view.
The researchers adapted phase contrast, a nearly century-old imaging method, for cryoelectron microscopy (cryo-EM). Their laser phase plate improves contrast by changing the phase of an electron beam without significantly reducing its intensity.
The advance could also strengthen cryoelectron tomography (cryo-ET), which combines images taken from different angles to reconstruct molecules inside cells.
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