New Approaches in Electron Diffraction for Visualizing Macromolecular Assemblies with Atomic Detail

The ability of molecules to pack into ordered, crystalline assemblies, provided the right conditions, has been exploited for decades to explore their atomic structure. Still, many molecules fail to form ordered crystals of sufficient size for conventional structure determination, and the molecular causes for this are still poorly understood. Electron diffraction has shown promise in this direction, opening up the possibility of elucidating structures from crystals only a few hundred nanometers thick. This ability is changing the way crystallography is performed for both small and large molecules.