Imaging proteins at the truly single-molecule level

Abstract

Imaging single proteins has been a long-standing ambition for advancing various fields in natural science, as for instance structural biology, biophysics and molecular nanotechnology. In particular, revealing the distinct conformations of an individual protein is of utmost importance. Here, we show the imaging of individual proteins and protein complexes by low-energy electron holography. Samples of individual proteins and protein complexes on ultraclean freestanding graphene were prepared by soft-landing electrospray ion beam deposition, which allows chemical- and conformational-specific selection and gentle deposition. Low-energy electrons do not induce radiation damage, which enables acquiring sub-nanometer resolution images of individual proteins (cytochrome C and bovine serum albumin) as well as of protein complexes (hemoglobin), which are not the result of an averaging process.

References in corpus (8)

• Practical algorithms for simulation and reconstruction of digital in-line holograms
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Cited by in corpus (10)

• The Numerics of Phase Retrieval
• Moire structures in twisted bilayer graphene studied by transmission electron microscopy
• A preparative mass spectrometer to deposit intact large native protein complexes
• Non-universal Transverse Electron Mean Free Path through Few-layer Graphene
• Direct visualization of charge transport in suspended (or free-standing) DNA strands by low-energy electron microscopy
• Strong inelastic scattering of slow electrons by optical near fields of small nanoparticles
• Resolution enhancement in in-line holography by numerical compensation of vibrations
• Dynamics of single Au nanoparticles on graphene simultaneously in real- and diffraction space by time-series convergent beam electron diffraction
• Phase retrieval methods applied to coherent imaging
• How to image single isolated atoms by using coherent low-energy electrons