Kimanius, D. et al. eLife http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.18722 (2016).

Single-particle cryoelectron microscopy (cryo-EM) is becoming an increasingly popular approach for solving challenging protein and protein complex structures. However, a methodological bottleneck that still limits progress in this field is the need for computationally intensive image classification and structure refinement steps. Kimanius et al. present RELION-2, a substantially faster version of the popular RELION tool for cryo-EM-based structure determination. The use of graphics processing unit (GPU) acceleration greatly shortens the time required for image processing and structure determination as compared to the original RELION package. The authors demonstrate that a high-resolution structure can be determined using RELION-2 within days on a desktop computer or within just hours on a GPU cluster. The tool is likely to have significant practical benefits for researchers utilizing cryo-EM.