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Self-terminating diffraction gates femtosecond X-ray nanocrystallography measurements

Abstract

X-ray free-electron lasers have enabled new approaches to the structural determination of protein crystals that are too small or radiation-sensitive for conventional analysis1. For sufficiently short pulses, diffraction is collected before significant changes occur to the sample, and it has been predicted that pulses as short as 10 fs may be required to acquire atomic-resolution structural information1,2,3,4. Here, we describe a mechanism unique to ultrafast, ultra-intense X-ray experiments that allows structural information to be collected from crystalline samples using high radiation doses without the requirement for the pulse to terminate before the onset of sample damage. Instead, the diffracted X-rays are gated by a rapid loss of crystalline periodicity, producing apparent pulse lengths significantly shorter than the duration of the incident pulse. The shortest apparent pulse lengths occur at the highest resolution, and our measurements indicate that current X-ray free-electron laser technology5 should enable structural determination from submicrometre protein crystals with atomic resolution.

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Figure 1: Femtosecond X-ray diffraction from Photosystem I nanocrystals.
Figure 2: Dynamics of exploding crystals.
Figure 3: Self-terminating Bragg diffraction.
Figure 4: Bragg termination observed at approximately constant X-ray pulse fluence I0T.
Figure 5: Dynamic disorder factor at atomic resolution.

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Acknowledgements

Experiments were carried out at the Linac Coherent Light Source national user facilities operated by Stanford University on behalf of the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Basic Energy Sciences. The authors acknowledge support from the Helmholtz Association, the Max Planck Society for funding the development and operation of the CAMP instrument within the ASG at CFEL, the DOE through the PULSE Institute at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (contract DE-AC52-07NA27344), the US National Science Foundation (awards 0417142 and MCB-1021557), the US National Institutes of Health (awards 1R01GM095583-01 (ROADMAP) and 1U54GM094625-01 (PSI:Biology)), the Joachim Herz Stiftung and the Swedish Research Council. The authors also thank the staff of the LCLS for their support in carrying out these experiments, and D. van der Spoel for providing computational resources.

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H.N.C., J.C.H.S., A.B. and P.F. conceived the experiment, which was designed with T.A.W., R.A.K., J.S., D.D.P., U.W., R.B.D., S.Bo., M.J.B., D.S., I.S., S.M. and J.H. The CAMP instrument was the responsibility of S.W.E., R.H., D.R., A.R., L.F., N.K., P.H., B.R., B.E., A.H., Ch.R., G.W., L.S., G.H., H.G., J.U., I.S., H.So., H.H., L.G., H.G. and C.W., who operated the pnCCD detectors. C.B., J.B. and M.M. set up and aligned the beamline. P.F., M.S.H. and I.G. prepared samples. R.B.D., D.D.P., U.W., J.C.H.S., P.F., L.L. and R.L.S. developed and operated the sample delivery system. H.N.C., A.B., A.A., J.S., D.P.P., U.W., R.B.D., S.Ba., M.J.B., L.G., J.H., M.M.S., N.T., J.A., S.St. and J.C.H.S. developed diffraction instrumentation. M.B., M.L., A.B. and K.N. designed and/or fabricated calibration samples. H.N.C., J.C.H.S., P.F., A.B., T.A.W., R.A.K., C.C., A.A., L.L., J.S., D.P.D., U.W., R.B.D., I.S., N.C., R.L.S., M.S.H., M.B., S.W.E., R.H., D.R., A.R., S.K., T.E., M.L., C.B., J.U., L.F., J.D.B., M.M., M.F., C.Y.H., R.G.S., G.J.W., A.R., M.S., O.J., I.A. and J.H. carried out the experiment. A.B, C.C., N.T. and H.N.C. developed the theory, and analysed the data with L.L., T.A.W., I.S. and T.R.M.B. N.T., C.C. and H.S. carried out the Cretin simulations. A.B., C.C. and H.N.C. wrote the manuscript with discussion and improvements from all authors.

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Correspondence to Anton Barty or Henry N. Chapman.

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Barty, A., Caleman, C., Aquila, A. et al. Self-terminating diffraction gates femtosecond X-ray nanocrystallography measurements. Nature Photon 6, 35–40 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2011.297

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