Single-particle cryo-EM at atomic resolution

A software tool, cryoSPARC, addresses the speed bottleneck in cryo-EM image processing, enabling automated macromolecular structure determination in hours on a desktop computer without requiring a starting model.

MotionCor2 software corrects for beam-induced sample motion, improving the resolution of cryo-EM reconstructions.

Here, we describe the third major release of RELION. CPU-based vector acceleration has been added in addition to GPU support, which provides flexibility in use of resources and avoids memory limitations. Reference-free autopicking with Laplacian-of-Gaussian filtering and execution of jobs from python allows non-interactive processing during acquisition, including 2D-classification, de novo model generation and 3D-classification. Per-particle refinement of CTF parameters and correction of estimated beam tilt provides higher resolution reconstructions when particles are at different heights in the ice, and/or coma-free alignment has not been optimal. Ewald sphere curvature correction improves resolution for large particles. We illustrate these developments with publicly available data sets: together with a Bayesian approach to beam-induced motion correction it leads to resolution improvements of 0.2–0.7 Å compared to previous RELION versions.