Dear colleagues,

Recently, Thomas Martin and Anthony Fitzpatrick in my group, together 
with Andreas Boland from the Barford group, have successfully used 
graphene oxide as a support layer for cryo-EM grids on various projects 
(e.g. see http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms11293). Graphene oxide may be 
used, much like a thin film of amorphous carbon, to concentrate 
particles on the grid, to modify orientational distributions, or to 
convince particles to go over the holes. However, the background signal 
from a single layer of graphene oxide is significantly less than for a 
thin film of amorphous carbon, making it better suited for small complexes.

The use of graphene oxide for this purpose was first proposed by Rado 
Pantelic et al. in the Plitzko group (see 
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jsb.2009.12.020). Thomas, Andreas and 
Anthony made minor modifications to their procedure, i.e. they 
introduced washing steps to have a more reproducible coverage of single 
graphene oxide layers. In the hope that this procedure is useful for 
others, Thomas has kindly prepared a video on how to prepare these 
grids. This procedure takes only a few minutes and is generally 
perceived as much easier than making and depositing a thin film of 
amorphous carbon. The video is available through figshare: 
http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3178669. Please direct questions 
about the practicalities of this method directly to Thomas (CC), and 
don't forget to cite the Pantelic paper when using graphene oxide grids.

Best wishes,
Sjors

-- 
Sjors Scheres
MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
Francis Crick Avenue, Cambridge Biomedical Campus
Cambridge CB2 0QH, U.K.
tel: +44 (0)1223 267061
http://www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/groups/scheres