Electron microscopy of macromolecular structures is an approach that is in increasing demand in the field of structural biology. The automation of image acquisition has greatly increased the potential throughput of electron microscopy. Here, the focus is on the possibilities in Scipion to implement flexible and robust image-processing workflows that allow the electron-microscope operator and the user to monitor the quality of image acquisition, assessing very simple acquisition measures or obtaining a first estimate of the initial volume, or the data resolution and heterogeneity, without any need for programming skills. These workflows can implement intelligent automatic decisions and they can warn the user of possible acquisition failures. These concepts are illustrated by analysis of the well known 2.2 Å resolution β-galactosidase data setThe authors would like to acknowledge financial support from
The Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness
through the BIO2016-76400-R (AEI/FEDER, UE) grant, the
Comunidad Auto´noma de Madrid through grant S2017/BMD3817, the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (PT17/0009/0010), the
European Union (EU) and Horizon 2020 through the
CORBEL grant (INFRADEV-1-2014-1, Proposal 654248),
the ‘la Caixa’ Foundation (ID 100010434, Fellow LCF/BQ/
IN18/11660021), Elixir–EXCELERATE (INFRADEV-3-
2015, Proposal 676559), iNEXT (INFRAIA-1-2014-2015,
Proposal 653706), EOSCpilot (INFRADEV-04-2016,
Proposal 739563) and INSTRUCT–ULTRA (INFRADEV03-2016-2017, Proposal 731005