International collaboration obtains the first scientific results from European XFEL

Artistic presentation of the experiment: When the ultra-bright X-ray flashes (violet) the enzyme crystals in the water jet (blue) can be reconstructed from this fluoroscopy the three-dimensional form of the enzyme (right). Image: DESY / Lucid Berlin

An international collaboration, consisting of over 120 researchers, has announced the results of the first scientific experiments at Europe’s new X-ray free-electron laser, called the European XFEL. This first study reveals a previously unknown structure of an enzyme, responsible for antibiotics resistance. “The ground-breaking work of the first team to use the European XFEL has paved the way for all users of the facility who greatly benefit from these pioneering experiments,” emphasises European XFEL managing director Robert Feidenhans’l. “We are very pleased – these first results show that the facility is ready to deliver new scientific breakthroughs.” The scientists present their results, including the first new protein structure solved at the European XFEL, in the journal Nature Communications.
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X-ray diffraction pattern generated from two different-sized spherical objects in close proximity to each other. © Nature Photonics

Ultrafast X-ray imaging on individual fragile specimens such as aerosols, metastable particles, superfluid quantum systems and live biospecimens provides high-resolution information that is inaccessible with conventional imaging techniques. Coherent X-ray diffractive imaging, however, suffers from intrinsic loss of phase, and therefore structure recovery is often complicated and not always uniquely defined. Here, we introduce the method of in-flight holography, where we use xenon or krypton nanoclusters as reference X-ray scatterers to encode relative phase information into diffraction patterns of a virus. The resulting hologram contains an unambiguous three-dimensional map of a virus and two nanoclusters with the highest lateral resolution so far achieved via single shot X-ray holography. Our approach unlocks the benefits of holography for ultrafast X-ray imaging of nanoscale, non-periodic systems and paves the way to direct observation of complex electron dynamics down to the attosecond timescale. This research was recently published in Nature Photonics.

Two special journal issues on FEL research have been organised by our laboratory and were published simultaneously on 1 August 2016.

The special collection in Nature’s Scientific Data, entitled “Structural biology applications of X-ray lasers” contains a commentary and six papers that examine data generated at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS). The experiments describe structural studies of nanocrystals, single virus particles, living cells and cell organelles. All experimental datasets in the collection are openly available to the scientific community at the Coherent X-ray Imaging Data Bank (CXIDB).

The Journal of Applied Crystallography published a related collection of papers about software for free-electron laser experiments in a special virtual issue titled “CCP-FEL: a collection of computer programs for FEL research”. The introductory article and 16 papers discuss tools such as simulation of experiments, online monitoring of data collection, selection of hits, diagnostics of data quality, data management, and data analysis and structure determination for nanocrystallography and also for single-particle diffractive imaging.

Our article with the title “Hummingbird: monitoring and analyzing flash X-ray imaging experiments in real time” (doi:10.1107/S1600576716005926) has been published in the Journal of Applied Crystallography.

Nature has selected the image from our paper with the title “Three-Dimensional Reconstruction of the Giant Mimivirus Particle with an X-Ray Free-Electron Laser” (doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.098102) as one of the 10 best images of the year 2015.

The American Physical Society (APS) selected our paper with the title “Three-Dimensional Reconstruction of the Giant Mimivirus Particle with an X-Ray Free-Electron Laser” (doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.098102) as highlight of the year 2015.

Our paper with the title “Three-Dimensional Reconstruction of the Giant Mimivirus Particle with an X-Ray Free-Electron Laser” (doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.098102) has been published in the journal Physical Review Letters. The article is featured in a news item in Nature and as a viewpoint by APS Physics. For links to press releases and more articles covering our publication please go to the section Press.

The BBC reports about today’s most powerful X-ray laser, the LINAC coherent Light Source (LCLS) at Stanford University (California). Video

Our article on “Imaging single cells in a beam of live cyanobacteria with an X-ray laser” (doi:10.1038/ncomms6704) has been published in Nature Communications. more...

Our article with the title “High-throughput imaging of heterogeneous cell organelles with an X-ray laser” (doi:10.1038/nphoton.2014.270) has been published in Nature Photonics.