Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Cell Activities and Stress Adaptations, School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China.
Electron Microscopy Centre of Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China.
Int J Mol Sci. 2021 Aug 19;22(16):8940. doi: 10.3390/ijms22168940.
Cryo-electron microscopy (Cryo-EM) has become a routine technology for resolving the structure of biological macromolecules due to the resolution revolution in recent years. The specimens are typically prepared in a very thin layer of vitrified ice suspending in the holes of the perforated amorphous carbon film. However, the samples prepared by directly applying to the conventional support membranes may suffer from partial or complete denaturation caused by sticking to the air-water interface (AWI). With the application in materials, graphene has also been used recently to improve frozen sample preparation instead of a suspended conventional amorphous thin carbon. It has been proven that graphene or graphene oxide and various chemical modifications on its surface can effectively prevent particles from adsorbing to the AWI, which improves the dispersion, adsorbed number, and orientation preference of frozen particles in the ice layer. Their excellent properties and thinner thickness can significantly reduce the background noise, allowing high-resolution three-dimensional reconstructions using a minimum data set.
冷冻电子显微镜（Cryo-EM）近年来分辨率革命的推动下，已经成为解析生物大分子结构的常规技术。通常，将样本制备在一层非常薄的悬在多孔无定形碳膜孔中的玻璃态冰中。然而，直接应用于常规支撑膜的样本可能会因粘在气-水界面（AWI）上而部分或完全变性。在材料应用中，石墨烯最近也被用于改进冷冻样品制备，而不是悬浮的传统无定形薄碳。已经证明，石墨烯或氧化石墨烯及其表面的各种化学修饰可以有效地防止颗粒吸附到 AWI 上，从而提高了冰晶层中冷冻颗粒的分散性、吸附数量和取向偏好。它们优异的性能和更薄的厚度可以显著降低背景噪声，允许使用最小数据集进行高分辨率三维重构。
