Low-energy electron holographic imaging of individual tobacco mosaic virions

Modern structural biology relies on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), X-ray crystallography, and cryo-electron microscopy for gaining information on biomolecules at nanometer, sub-nanometer, or atomic resolution. All these methods, however, require averaging over a vast ensemble of entities, and hence knowledge on the conformational landscape of an individual particle is lost. Unfortunately, there are now strong indications that even X-ray free electron lasers will not be able to image individual molecules but will require nanocrystal samples. Here, we show that non-destructive structural biology of single particles has now become possible by means of low-energy electron holography. As an example, individual tobacco mosaic virions deposited on ultraclean freestanding graphene are imaged at 1 nm resolution revealing structural details arising from the helical arrangement of the outer protein shell of the virus. Since low-energy electron holography is a lens-less technique and since electrons with a deBroglie wavelength of approximately 1 Å do not impose radiation damage to biomolecules, the method has the potential for Angstrom resolution imaging of single biomolecules.