Versatility of Approximating Single-Particle Electron Microscopy Density Maps Using Pseudoatoms and Approximation-Accuracy Control

Figure 1

Approximation of density maps to a desired level of accuracy () using 3D Gaussian functions of a given standard deviation (). (a, b) Synthetic density map of Tomato Bushy Stunt Virus at 15 Å resolution from an atomic structure available in PDB (the structure from [55]) (a) and its pseudoatomic representation using = 1.3 and (b). (c, d) Synthetic density map of 70S ribosome at 15 Å resolution from an atomic structure available in PDB (the structure from [56]) (c) and its pseudoatomic representation using = 1 and (d). In this figure, 3D Gaussian functions (referred to as pseudoatoms) are shown as spheres of a radius related to and overlapping spheres are used for a nicer visualization of the pseudoatomic structure.

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