PRIME: Probabilistic Initial 3D Model Generation for Single-Particle Cryo-Electron Microscopy
Venue
Structure, vol. 21 (2013), pp. 1299-1306
Publication Year
2013
Authors
Hans Elmlund, Dominika Elmlund, Samy Bengio
BibTeX
Abstract
Low-dose electron microscopy of cryo-preserved individual biomolecules
(single-particle cryo-EM) is a powerful tool for obtaining information about the
structure and dynamics of large macromolecular assemblies. Acquiring images with
low dose reduces radiation damage, preserves atomic structural details, but results
in low signal-to-noise ratio of the individual images. The projection directions of
the two-dimensional images are random and unknown. The grand challenge is to
achieve the precise three-dimensional (3D) alignment of many (tens of thousands to
millions) noisy projection images, which may then be combined to obtain a faithful
3D map. An accurate initial 3D model is critical for obtaining the precise 3D
alignment required for high-resolution (<10 Å) map reconstruction. We report a
method (PRIME) that, in a single step and without prior structural knowledge, can
generate an accurate initial 3D map directly from the noisy images.
