Electron Microscopes Close To Imaging Individual Atoms

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Science: Today's digital photos are far more vivid than just a few years ago, thanks to a steady stream of advances in optics, detectors, and software. Similar advances have also improved the ability of machines called cryo-electron microscopes (cryo-EMs) to see the Lilliputian world of atoms and molecules. Now, researchers report that they've created the highest ever resolution cryo-EM image, revealing a druglike molecule bound to its protein target at near atomic resolution. The resolution is so sharp that it rivals images produced by x-ray crystallography, long the gold standard for mapping the atomic contours of proteins. This newfound success is likely to dramatically help drugmakers design novel medicines for a wide variety of conditions.

Comments

A cure will finally be found?!

[Anonymous Coward]

This newfound success is likely to dramatically help drugmakers design novel medicines for a wide variety of conditions.

So does this new electron microscope technology mean that these pharmaceutical companies will finally be able to create medication to treat the most heinous of diseases, the dreadful condition known as micropenis?

It does make sense, though. It's hard to test medications and to determine their effects on micropenis when the micropenis in question is too small to see with traditional microscopes. Being able to finally see the micropenises they're trying to treat will surely help these researchers create a cure much faster.

Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now we can photograph CmdrTaco's nanopenis