Energy Efficiency Improvement in Cryogenic Electron Microscopy: Strategies to Mitigate Foul Emissions

Abstract

Cryogenic electron microscopy has emerged as a powerfully enabling tool in biomolecular structure determination at near-atomic resolution, hence driving major advances in biological and material sciences. On the other hand, energy consumption of the technique and environmental impact due to foul emissions beg important questions on methodologies. The paper reports on a laboratory procedure with explicit details focused on cryo-EM. Details include steps in effective freezing of biological samples with inlaid strategies for enhanced energy efficiency. In this paper, we optimize conditions at each step in the workflow of cryo-EM-from preparation to imaging-to minimize all types of foul emissions while offering high-resolution imaging capability.