ABSTRACT Electron crystallography is increasingly becoming a viable alternative for structure elucidation of three-dimensional, multi-nanometre sized crystals of beam-sensitive organics and macromolecules. Because electrons interact with matter strongly, crystals cannot be much more than 200 nm thick. Diffracted volumes are therefore small, leading to a poor signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) as beam damage limits the total electron dose. Data can be collected in diffraction – and imaging mode. Imaging has the advantage of providing spatial phase information but comes at a substantial cost in SNR. Highly sensitive hybrid pixel detectors push the limits of high-quality diffraction data acquisition even further. Data integration, structure solution and refinement are feasible with existing software after minor adaptations. We review the current state of electron diffraction for structural biology, including instrumentation, data acquisition and structure determination.

中文翻译：

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用于结构生物学的电子衍射和三维晶体学

摘要电子晶体学正日益成为对三维、多纳米尺寸的光束敏感有机物和大分子晶体进行结构解析的可行替代方法。由于电子与物质的相互作用很强，晶体的厚度不能超过 200 纳米。因此，衍射体积很小，导致信噪比 (SNR) 较差，因为束损伤限制了总电子剂量。可以在衍射和成像模式下收集数据。成像具有提供空间相位信息的优势，但其 SNR 成本很高。高灵敏度混合像素探测器进一步推动了高质量衍射数据采集的极限。对现有软件稍作修改后，数据整合、结构求解和细化是可行的。