| 1. |
- Bielecki, Johan, 1982, et al.
(författare)
-
Electrospray sample injection for single-particle imaging with x-ray lasers
- 2019
-
Ingår i: Science advances. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 2375-2548. ; 5:5
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The possibility of imaging single proteins constitutes an exciting challenge for x-ray lasers. Despite encouraging results on large particles, imaging small particles has proven to be difficult for two reasons: not quite high enough pulse intensity from currently available x-ray lasers and, as we demonstrate here, contamination of the aerosolized molecules by nonvolatile contaminants in the solution. The amount of contamination on the sample depends on the initial droplet size during aerosolization. Here, we show that, with our electrospray injector, we can decrease the size of aerosol droplets and demonstrate virtually contaminant-free sample delivery of organelles, small virions, and proteins. The results presented here, together with the increased performance of next-generation x-ray lasers, constitute an important stepping stone toward the ultimate goal of protein structure determination from imaging at room temperature and high temporal resolution.
|
|
| 2. |
- Gorkhover, Tais, et al.
(författare)
-
Femtosecond X-ray Fourier holography imaging of free-flying nanoparticles
- 2018
-
Ingår i: Nature Photonics. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1749-4885 .- 1749-4893. ; 12:3, s. 150-153
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Ultrafast X-ray imaging on individual fragile specimens such as aerosols 1 , metastable particles 2 , superfluid quantum systems 3 and live biospecimens 4 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 4,5 . Here, we introduce the method of in-flight holography, where we use 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.
|
|
| 3. |
- Hantke, Max Felix, et al.
(författare)
-
Rayleigh-scattering microscopy for tracking and sizing nanoparticles in focused aerosol beams
- 2018
-
Ingår i: IUCrJ. - 2052-2525. ; 5, s. 673-680
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Ultra-bright femtosecond X-ray pulses generated by X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) can be used to image high-resolution structures without the need for crystallization. For this approach, aerosol injection has been a successful method to deliver 70-2000 nm particles into the XFEL beam efficiently and at low noise. Improving the technique of aerosol sample delivery and extending it to single proteins necessitates quantitative aerosol diagnostics. Here a lab-based technique is introduced for Rayleigh-scattering microscopy allowing us to track and size aerosolized particles down to 40 nm in diameter as they exit the injector. This technique was used to characterize the 'Uppsala injector', which is a pioneering and frequently used aerosol sample injector for XFEL single-particle imaging. The particle-beam focus, particle velocities, particle density and injection yield were measured at different operating conditions. It is also shown how high particle densities and good injection yields can be reached for large particles (100-500 nm). It is found that with decreasing particle size, particle densities and injection yields deteriorate, indicating the need for different injection strategies to extend XFEL imaging to smaller targets, such as single proteins. This work demonstrates the power of Rayleigh-scattering microscopy for studying focused aerosol beams quantitatively. It lays the foundation for lab-based injector development and online injection diagnostics for XFEL research. In the future, the technique may also find application in other fields that employ focused aerosol beams, such as mass spectrometry, particle deposition, fuel injection and three-dimensional printing techniques.
|
|
