Abstract text (incl. figure legends and references)
Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) allows for the visualization of biomolecules at near-atomic resolution and has become an increasingly important tool for structural biologists. The presentation will discuss several strategies for optimizing cryo-EM data acquisition in order to improve the efficiency and throughput of experiments. Innovative approaches that have been developed over the years will be covered, such as aberration-free image shift (AFIS), and fringe-free imaging (FFI), which have been shown to improve the throughput of cryo-EM data collection. Additionally, the use of "Virtual Maps" for screening samples with problematic particle distribution will be discussed, a strategy that helps to prioritize areas of the sample for imaging and reduce the overall time and resources required for the experiment. Lastly, screening cryo-EM samples using an energy filter"s plasmon regime will be presented. Through the use of these optimization strategies, researchers can obtain high-quality data from cryo-EM experiments, leading to informative structural models, in a shorter amount of data acquisition time.