Ultra-rapid cryo-EM data acquisition method enabled by continuous recording based beam image shift

Nature Communications, 12 June, 2026, DOI：https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-74373-6

Ultra-rapid cryo-EM data acquisition method enabled by continuous recording based beam image shift

Qi Yang, Xiaojun Huang, Chunling Wu, Yan Zeng & Xinzheng Zhang

Abstract

Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) data acquisition is time-intensive given that a large amount of data is required to obtain a high-resolution reconstruction. Here, we eliminate camera-induced delay time by continuously recording during beam-image shift acquisition using a method called Continuous Recording Beam-Image Shift (CR-BIS). The utilization of CR-BIS with K3 and Falcon 4 direct electron detectors and conventional data acquisition conditions enables the acquisition of ~34,000 micrographs and ~1,000 tilt series per 24 h in single-particle analysis mode and cryo-electron tomography mode, respectively. Three-dimensional reconstructions of single-particle and tomographic datasets show that CR-BIS accelerates data collection and maintains data quality. CR-BIS is broadly applicable for efficient high-resolution cryo-EM since it can be implemented into existing acquisition software through scripting and it does not require hardware modification.

文章链接：https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-74373-6