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When Diffraction Stops and Destruction Begins

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X-ray Free Electron Lasers

Abstract

It is now possible to solve protein structures with femtosecond X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) pulses that were previously inaccessible to continuous synchrotron sources due to radiation damage. The key to this success is that diffraction probes the protein structure on femtosecond timescales, whereas nuclear motion takes tens to hundreds of femtoseconds to have a significant effect on the crystal structure. This is the essential idea behind the diffraction-before-destruction principle that underlies serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) with XFELs. In practice, the principle works well enough to determine protein structures of comparable resolution to synchrotron protein crystallography, which has led to the many successes of XFEL crystallography to date.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Carl Caleman

  2. Center for Free-Electron Laser Science, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, Hamburg, Germany

    Carl Caleman

  3. School of Science, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Andrew V. Martin

  4. ARC Centre of Excellence for Advanced Molecular Imaging, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Andrew V. Martin

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  1. Carl Caleman
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  2. Andrew V. Martin
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Correspondence to Carl Caleman .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, USA

    Sébastien Boutet

  2. School of Molecular Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Petra Fromme

  3. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, USA

    Mark S. Hunter

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Caleman, C., Martin, A.V. (2018). When Diffraction Stops and Destruction Begins. In: Boutet, S., Fromme, P., Hunter, M. (eds) X-ray Free Electron Lasers. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00551-1_6

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