3-D Reconstructions of Tailed Bacteriophages from CYRO Electron Microscopy Images

A 3-D reconstruction problem for virus particles based on cryo electron microscope images is described in which a spatially localized deviation from total-particle symmetry is present. In particular, we describe a statistical algorithm for the reconstruction of tailed bacteriophages where the symmetries of the capsid and tail are incompatible and therefore the tail is a deviation from symmetry. For reasons of computational complexity and reduced storage, we propose a two-step approach to reconstruction. Mathematical models and numerical results computed from synthetic data are presented.