Particle segmentation algorithm for flexible single particle reconstruction

• DOI: 10.1007/s41048-017-0038-7
• Publication Date: 2017-05-19T05:27:11Z
• Authors: Qiang Zhou; Niyun Zhou; Hong-Wei Wang
• Keywords: Particle (ecology); Cryo-Electron Microscopy

As single particle cryo-electron microscopy has evolved to a new era of atomic resolution, sample heterogeneity still imposes major limit the resolution many macromolecular complexes, especially those with continuous conformational flexibility. Here, we describe segmentation algorithm towards solving structures molecules composed several parts that are relatively flexible each other. In this algorithm, different target molecule segmented from raw images according their alignment information obtained preliminary 3D reconstruction and subjected processing in an iterative manner. This was tested on both simulated experimental data showed improvement part than entire molecule.