The crotoxin complex is a potent neurotoxin composed of a basic subunit (Mr = 12,000) and an acidic subunit (M = 10,000). The basic subunit possesses phospholipase activity whereas the acidic subunit shows no enzymatic activity at all. The complex's toxocity is expressed both pre- and post-synaptically. The crotoxin complex forms thin crystals suitable for electron crystallography. The crystals diffract up to 0.16 nm in the microscope, whereas images show reflections out to 0.39 nm2. Ultimate goal in this study is to obtain a three-dimensional (3D-) structure map of the protein around 0.3 nm resolution. Use of 100 keV electrons in this is limited; the unit cell's height c of 25.6 nm causes problems associated with multiple scattering, radiation damage, limited depth of field and a more pronounced Ewald sphere curvature. In general, they lead to projections of the unit cell, which at the desired resolution, cannot be interpreted following the weak-phase approximation. Circumventing this problem is possible through the use of 400 keV electrons. Although the overall contrast is lowered due to a smaller scattering cross-section, the signal-to-noise ratio of especially higher order reflections will improve due to a smaller contribution of inelastic scattering. We report here our preliminary results demonstrating the feasability of the data collection procedure at 400 kV.Crystals of crotoxin complex were prepared on carbon-covered holey-carbon films, quench frozen in liquid ethane, inserted into a Gatan 626 holder, transferred into a JEOL 4000EX electron microscope equipped with a pair of anticontaminators operating at −184°C and examined under low-dose conditions. Selected area electron diffraction patterns (EDP's) and images of the crystals were recorded at 400 kV and −167°C with dose levels of 5 and 9.5 electrons/Å, respectively.
