Radiation damage in protein serial femtosecond crystallography using an x-ray free-electron laser
Lukas Lomb1, Thomas R M Barends, Stephan Kassemeyer
1Max-Planck Institut für medizinische Forschung, Jahnstrasse 29, DE-69120 Heidelberg, Germany ; Max Planck Advanced Study Group, Center for Free-Electron Laser Science, Notkestrasse 85, DE-22607 Hamburg, Germany.
Abstract:
X-ray free-electron lasers deliver intense femtosecond pulses that promise to yield high resolution diffraction data of nanocrystals before the destruction of the sample by radiation damage. Diffraction intensities of lysozyme nanocrystals collected at the Linac Coherent Light Source using 2 keV photons were used for structure determination by molecular replacement and analyzed for radiation damage as a function of pulse length and fluence. Signatures of radiation damage are observed for pulses as short as 70 fs. Parametric scaling used in conventional crystallography does not account for the observed effects.
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