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Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is the method for structural analysis of molecules. In recent years, cryo-EM has revolutionized structural biology, providing unprecedented information about the structure of molecules at atomic resolution. The 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded for the development of cryo-EM for the determination of the high-resolution structure of biomolecules in solution.
In cryo-EM, the high-energy electron beam scatters the specimen embedded in the vitreous ice, producing images in the detector. The images correspond to the 2-D projections of the vitrified macromolecules. These images are then used to reconstruct the 3-D structures of the macromolecules using various mathematical algorithms. With recent advances in direct electron detectors, improvements in microscope optics and automation, and developments in image processing including GPU-base software, it is now possible to obtain complex macromolecular structures with a near-atomic resolution. 
These advances allow the analysis of drug interactions with protein/nucleic acid targets and show the strong potential of cryo-EM for structure-based drug design.
The Biomolecular Cryo-EM Facility at UCSC provides high throughput sample preparation, data acquisition, and processing, among consulting and project feasibility evaluation.