Destruction-and-diffraction by X-ray free-electron laser.

ABSTRACT: It is common knowledge that macromolecular crystals are damaged by the X-rays they are exposed to during conventional data collection. One of the claims made about the crystallographic data collection now being collected using X-ray free-electron lasers (XFEL) is that they are unaffected by radiation damage. XFEL data sets are assembled by merging data obtained from a very large number of crystals, each of which is exposed to a single femtosecond pulse of radiation, the duration of which is so short that diffraction occurs before the damage done to the crystal has time to become manifest, i.e. "diffraction-before-destruction." However, recent theoretical studies have shown that many of the elemental electronic processes that ultimately result in the destruction of such crystals occur durin

SUBMITTER: Wang J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5338243 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature