Advances in Atom Probe Tomography Analysis of Silica Embedded Proteins

Journal article, 2025

The determination of the three-dimensional (3D) structure of proteins remains a longstanding challenge in biology. It is essential for understanding fundamental biological processes and has applications such as pharmaceutical development. Historically, X-ray diffraction, NMR spectroscopy, cryo-electron microscopy, and most recently, machine learning methods, have all been used successfully to determine the structure of many proteins. However, there remains a need for new methodologies, as the established methods often struggle with the determination of the 3D structure of membrane and dynamic or intrinsically disordered protein structures. Predicting the structure of these proteins also remains a challenge for the new machine learning methods.