News Summary

• The technology, called a laser phase plate (LPP), should extend the cryo-EM technique to a broader range of proteins than was previously possible.
• LPP development posed numerous technical challenges.
• ‘The laser focus that we have to generate is the brightest continuous laser focus anywhere,’ says Holger Müller.
• “It’s the first exciting new thing to happen in cryo.EM hardware beyond things that have been around for decades now,” says David Agard, founding scientific director of imaging at the biotechnology organization Biohub in Redwood City, California.