Cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) has emerged as a powerful method for resolving the atomistic details of cellular components. In recent years, several computational methods have been developed to study the heterogeneity of molecules in single-particle cryo-EM. In this study, we analyzed a publicly available single-particle dataset of TRPV1 using five of these methods: 3D Flexible Refinement, 3D Variability Analysis, cryoDRGN, ManifoldEM, and Bayesian ensemble reweighting. Beyond what we initially expected, we have found that this dataset contains significant heterogeneity— indicating that single particle datasets likely contain a rich spectrum of biologically relevant states. Further, we have found that different methods are best suited to studying different kinds of heterogeneity, with some methods being more sensitive to either compositional or conformational heterogeneity. We also apply a combination of Bayesian ensemble reweighting and molecular dynamics as supporting evidence for the presence of these rarer states within the sample. Finally, we developed a quantitative metric based on the analysis of the singular value decomposition and power spectra to compare the resulting volumes from each method. This work represents a detailed view of the variable outcomes of different heterogeneity methods used to analyze a single real dataset and presents a pathway to a deeper understanding of the biology of complex macromolecules like the TRPV1 ion channel.
