[3dem] video on making graphene oxide grids
Sjors Scheres
scheres at mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk
Thu Apr 28 07:17:10 PDT 2016
Dear colleagues,
Recently, Thomas Martin and Anthony Fitzpatrick in my group, together
with Andreas Boland from the Barford group, have successfully used
graphene oxide as a support layer for cryo-EM grids on various projects
(e.g. see http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms11293). Graphene oxide may be
used, much like a thin film of amorphous carbon, to concentrate
particles on the grid, to modify orientational distributions, or to
convince particles to go over the holes. However, the background signal
from a single layer of graphene oxide is significantly less than for a
thin film of amorphous carbon, making it better suited for small complexes.
The use of graphene oxide for this purpose was first proposed by Rado
Pantelic et al. in the Plitzko group (see
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jsb.2009.12.020). Thomas, Andreas and
Anthony made minor modifications to their procedure, i.e. they
introduced washing steps to have a more reproducible coverage of single
graphene oxide layers. In the hope that this procedure is useful for
others, Thomas has kindly prepared a video on how to prepare these
grids. This procedure takes only a few minutes and is generally
perceived as much easier than making and depositing a thin film of
amorphous carbon. The video is available through figshare:
http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3178669. Please direct questions
about the practicalities of this method directly to Thomas (CC), and
don't forget to cite the Pantelic paper when using graphene oxide grids.
Best wishes,
Sjors
--
Sjors Scheres
MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
Francis Crick Avenue, Cambridge Biomedical Campus
Cambridge CB2 0QH, U.K.
tel: +44 (0)1223 267061
http://www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/groups/scheres
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