July 5, 2023
Report

MicroED for rapid and comprehensive characterization of the unknown small molecule composition of crude plant and soil extracts

Abstract

This project implemented at PNNL a method introduced recently [1] for de novo structure elucidation of small organic molecules: Micro-Electron Diffraction (henceforth microED). Micro-ED is an alternative to X-ray diffraction (XRD) or Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) for atomic-resolution structure elucidation of small organic or biological molecules, and it can succeed in solving structures when these well-established methods fail. In particular, microED offers the possibility of determining structures from far smaller quantities of material than would be required for NMR or even XRD, or from substances that fail to form crystals suitable (i.e., large enough) for X-ray crystallography, because microED requires only microcrystalline samples: in principle, a single crystal with ca. 100 nm dimensions would be suitable. MicroED is performed typically with standard electron microscopy (EM) instrumentation. The substantial potential of microED has drawn significant attention and examples of its use to solve difficult structure elucidation problems where X-ray or NMR methods failed has been described recently.

Published: July 5, 2023

Citation

Cort J.R., I.V. Novikova, and J.E. Evans. 2019. MicroED for rapid and comprehensive characterization of the unknown small molecule composition of crude plant and soil extracts Richland, WA: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.