Biological single-particle imaging using XFELs – towards the next resolution revolution

Oberthür, Dominik

doi:10.1107/s2052252518015129

Cited by 8 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Currently, the European XFEL is the only facility worldwide to enable experiments at megahertz repetition rates. This unprecedented data collection rate together with submicrometre beam focusing (Bean et al, 2016; and the application of either cage-based reaction initiation (Bourgeois & Weik, 2009;Duke et al, 1992;Schlichting et al, 1990;Stoddard et al, 1998;Tosha et al, 2017) or mix-on-demand sample delivery (Beyerlein et al, 2017;Ishigami et al, 2019;Knoška et al, 2020;Kupitz et al, 2017;Oberthuer et al, 2017;Schmidt, 2013;Stagno et al, 2017;Wang et al, 2014) will allow researchers to trigger and film chemical reactions in rapid time-resolved experiments to obtain threedimensional movies of the nanoworld.…”

Section: Experiments In Structural Biologymentioning

confidence: 99%

The XBI BioLab for life science experiments at the European XFEL

et al. 2021

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The science of X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) critically depends on the performance of the X-ray laser and on the quality of the samples placed into the X-ray beam. The stability of biological samples is limited and key biomolecular transformations occur on short timescales. Experiments in biology require a support laboratory in the immediate vicinity of the beamlines. The XBI BioLab of the European XFEL (XBI denotes XFEL Biology Infrastructure) is an integrated user facility connected to the beamlines for supporting a wide range of biological experiments. The laboratory was financed and built by a collaboration between the European XFEL and the XBI User Consortium, whose members come from Finland, Germany, the Slovak Republic, Sweden and the USA, with observers from Denmark and the Russian Federation. Arranged around a central wet laboratory, the XBI BioLab provides facilities for sample preparation and scoring, laboratories for growing prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, a Bio Safety Level 2 laboratory, sample purification and characterization facilities, a crystallization laboratory, an anaerobic laboratory, an aerosol laboratory, a vacuum laboratory for injector tests, and laboratories for optical microscopy, atomic force microscopy and electron microscopy. Here, an overview of the XBI facility is given and some of the results of the first user experiments are highlighted.

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Section: Experiments In Structural Biologymentioning

confidence: 99%

The XBI BioLab for life science experiments at the European XFEL

et al. 2021

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“…The aerosol injector reduces the amount of liquid around the sample during sample delivery, thereby the background scanning can be reduced effectively. However, the disadvantage of aerosol injectors is the low hit rate, which is a feature that needs to be optimized .…”

Section: Instrumentation Of Sample Delivery Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A guide to sample delivery systems for serial crystallography

et al. 2019

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Crystallography has made a notable contribution to our knowledge of structural biology. For traditional crystallography experiments, the growth of crystals with large size and high quality is crucial, and it remains one of the bottlenecks. In recent years, the successful application of serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) provides a new choice when only numerous microcrystals can be obtained. The intense pulsed radiation of X‐ray free‐electron lasers (XFELs) enables the data collection of small‐sized crystals, making the size of crystals no longer a limiting factor. The ultrafast pulses of XFELs can achieve ‘diffraction before destruction’, which effectively avoids radiation damage and realizes diffraction near physiological temperatures. More recently, the SFX has been expanded to serial crystallography (SX) that can additionally employ synchrotron radiation as the light source. In addition to the traditional ones, these techniques provide complementary opportunities for structural determination. The development of SX experiments strongly relies on the advancement of hardware including the sample delivery system, the X‐ray source, and the X‐ray detector. Here, in this review, we categorize the existing sample delivery systems, summarize their progress, and propose their future prospectives.

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“…FEL radiation can be used to gather information on several kinds of biological samples. Biological single particle imaging is one of the main topics of FEL research with dedicated beamlines, although the FEL intensity, the available detectors, and techniques to introduce the sample into the focused X-ray sampling position, were all insufficient to obtain (near) atomic resolution structural information from single biological macromolecules [11]. Nevertheless, recent experiments performed at LCLS showed that single-shot diffraction patterns from biological samples as small as 70 nm in diameter (e.g., the enterobacteria phage PR772 [12,13]) can be measured, and still at LCLS signal up to 5.9Åresolution was observed from rice dwarf virus [14].…”

Section: Coherent Imaging Of Biological Samplesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Potential of EuPRAXIA@SPARC_LAB for Radiation Based Techniques

et al. 2019

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A proposal for building a Free Electron Laser, EuPRAXIA@SPARC_LAB, at the Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati, is at present under consideration. This FEL facility will provide a unique combination of a high brightness GeV-range electron beam generated in a X-band RF linac, a 0.5 PW-class laser system and the first FEL source driven by a plasma accelerator. The FEL will produce ultra-bright pulses, with up to 10 12 photons/pulse, femtosecond timescale and wavelength down to 3 nm, which lies in the so called “water window”. The experimental activity will be focused on the realization of a plasma driven short wavelength FEL able to provide high-quality photons for a user beamline. In this paper, we describe the main classes of experiments that will be performed at the facility, including coherent diffraction imaging, soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering and photofragmentation measurements. These techniques will allow studying a variety of samples, both biological and inorganic, providing information about their structure and dynamical behavior. In this context, the possibility of inducing changes in samples via pump pulses leading to the stimulation of chemical reactions or the generation of coherent excitations would tremendously benefit from pulses in the soft X-ray region. High power synchronized optical lasers and a TeraHertz radiation source will indeed be made available for THz and pump–probe experiments and a split-and-delay station will allow performing XUV-XUV pump–probe experiments.

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Biological single-particle imaging using XFELs – towards the next resolution revolution

Cited by 8 publications

References 22 publications

The XBI BioLab for life science experiments at the European XFEL

The XBI BioLab for life science experiments at the European XFEL

A guide to sample delivery systems for serial crystallography

The Potential of EuPRAXIA@SPARC_LAB for Radiation Based Techniques

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