(173p) Microed: Cryo-Electron Diffraction of 3D Microcrystals

One of the critical bottlenecks in crystallography is the growth of large, well-ordered crystals for conventional X-ray experiments. Microcrystal electron-diffraction, or MicroED, is a structure determination method that uses a cryo-transmission electron microscope (cryo-TEM) to collect electron diffraction data from microcrystals. This technique has been successfully used to determine structures of targets from proteins, small organic molecules, and materials, all from crystals orders of magnitude smaller than what is needed for X-ray diffraction experiments. Here, we will describe the MicroED method and its applications, as well as continued improvements to facilitate MicroED structure determination for more difficult crystalline samples.