Here at Nature Methods, we were quite excited yesterday to wake up to the news that the Nobel Prize in Chemistry had been awarded to Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank, and Richard Henderson for their seminal developments in cryo-electron microscopy (better known as cryo-EM) which now enable high-resolution biomolecule structure determination. This is a technique we have been watching closely since 2013, when the first papers (including one of our own) realizing the capability of near-atomic-resolution structure determination with cryo-EM were published.
Though much of the excitement about cryo-EM is quite recent, the Nobel Prize is a good reminder to us all that the essential foundations of this technology were laid decades ago. We celebrated such developments, both old and new, in our 2015 Method of the Year issue featuring cryo-EM.
To commemorate this well-deserved Nobel Prize, Nature Research presents an editorially curated collection of papers published in our pages – including methods and protocols, biological results generated using cryo-EM technology, and reviews, news and comment. Check it out!