A Costly View
- Digital 3D, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator
- Valerie Altounian
Cryo–electron microscopy (cryo-EM) reveals the structure of proteins by probing a flash-frozen solution with a beam of electrons, and then combining 2D images of individual molecules into a 3D picture. The cost of high-energy microscopes has limited the method’s adoption, but researchers are pushing for cheaper, smaller, lower-energy machines (right).