scholarly journals Segmented flow generator for serial crystallography at the European X-ray free electron laser

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Austin Echelmeier ◽  
Jorvani Cruz Villarreal ◽  
Marc Messerschmidt ◽  
Daihyun Kim ◽  
Jesse D. Coe ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Free Electron ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Protein Crystal ◽  
Liquid Sample ◽  
Time Resolved ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Flow Generator ◽  
Serial Crystallography ◽  
Serial Femtosecond Crystallography

Abstract Serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) with X-ray free electron lasers (XFELs) allows structure determination of membrane proteins and time-resolved crystallography. Common liquid sample delivery continuously jets the protein crystal suspension into the path of the XFEL, wasting a vast amount of sample due to the pulsed nature of all current XFEL sources. The European XFEL (EuXFEL) delivers femtosecond (fs) X-ray pulses in trains spaced 100 ms apart whereas pulses within trains are currently separated by 889 ns. Therefore, continuous sample delivery via fast jets wastes >99% of sample. Here, we introduce a microfluidic device delivering crystal laden droplets segmented with an immiscible oil reducing sample waste and demonstrate droplet injection at the EuXFEL compatible with high pressure liquid delivery of an SFX experiment. While achieving ~60% reduction in sample waste, we determine the structure of the enzyme 3-deoxy-D-manno-octulosonate-8-phosphate synthase from microcrystals delivered in droplets revealing distinct structural features not previously reported.

scholarly journals Serial crystallography using automated drop dispensing

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhen Su ◽  
Joshua Cantlon ◽  
Lacey Douthit ◽  
Max Wiedorn ◽  
Sébastien Boutet ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Free Electron Laser ◽  
Protein Crystal ◽  
Cross Contamination ◽  
X Ray ◽  
On Demand ◽  
Drop On Demand ◽  
Serial Crystallography ◽  
Cycling System ◽  
Serial Femtosecond Crystallography

Automated, pulsed liquid-phase sample delivery has the potential to greatly improve the efficiency of both sample and photon use at pulsed X-ray facilities. In this work, an automated drop on demand (DOD) system that accelerates sample exchange for serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) is demonstrated. Four different protein crystal slurries were tested, and this technique is further improved here with an automatic sample-cycling system whose effectiveness was verified by the indexing results. Here, high-throughput SFX screening is shown to be possible at free-electron laser facilities with very low risk of cross contamination and minimal downtime. The development of this technique will significantly reduce sample consumption and enable structure determination of proteins that are difficult to crystallize in large quantities. This work also lays the foundation for automating sample delivery.

Time-Resolved Serial Femtosecond Crystallography at the European X-ray Free Electron Laser

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marius Schmidt ◽  
Suraj Pandey ◽  
Adrian Mancuso ◽  
Richard Bean
Keyword(s):  
Free Electron ◽  
Free Electron Laser ◽  
Crystallographic Data ◽  
Time Resolved ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Serial Femtosecond Crystallography

Abstract This protocol introduces step by step into the collection of time resolved crystallographic data and their analysis at the European Free Electron Laser.

scholarly journals Time-Resolved Macromolecular Crystallography at Pulsed X-ray Sources

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 1401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marius Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Structural Biology ◽  
Free Electron ◽  
Reaction Dynamics ◽  
X Rays ◽  
Free Electron Lasers ◽  
Macromolecular Crystallography ◽  
Time Resolved ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Methodological Aspects

The focus of structural biology is shifting from the determination of static structures to the investigation of dynamical aspects of macromolecular function. With time-resolved macromolecular crystallography (TRX), intermediates that form and decay during the macromolecular reaction can be investigated, as well as their reaction dynamics. Time-resolved crystallographic methods were initially developed at synchrotrons. However, about a decade ago, extremely brilliant, femtosecond-pulsed X-ray sources, the free electron lasers for hard X-rays, became available to a wider community. TRX is now possible with femtosecond temporal resolution. This review provides an overview of methodological aspects of TRX, and at the same time, aims to outline the frontiers of this method at modern pulsed X-ray sources.

scholarly journals Liquid sample delivery techniques for serial femtosecond crystallography

2014 ◽  
Vol 369 (1647) ◽  
pp. 20130337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uwe Weierstall
Keyword(s):  
Flow Rate ◽  
Free Electron ◽  
Repetition Rate ◽  
Free Electron Laser ◽  
Room Temperature ◽  
Liquid Flow Rate ◽  
Free Electron Lasers ◽  
Liquid Sample ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Serial Femtosecond Crystallography

X-ray free-electron lasers overcome the problem of radiation damage in protein crystallography and allow structure determination from micro- and nanocrystals at room temperature. To ensure that consecutive X-ray pulses do not probe previously exposed crystals, the sample needs to be replaced with the X-ray repetition rate, which ranges from 120 Hz at warm linac-based free-electron lasers to 1 MHz at superconducting linacs. Liquid injectors are therefore an essential part of a serial femtosecond crystallography experiment at an X-ray free-electron laser. Here, we compare different techniques of injecting microcrystals in solution into the pulsed X-ray beam in vacuum. Sample waste due to mismatch of the liquid flow rate to the X-ray repetition rate can be addressed through various techniques.

scholarly journals Batch crystallization of rhodopsin for structural dynamics using an X-ray free-electron laser

2015 ◽  
Vol 71 (7) ◽  
pp. 856-860 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenting Wu ◽  
Przemyslaw Nogly ◽  
Jan Rheinberger ◽  
Leonhard M. Kick ◽  
Cornelius Gati ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Free Electron ◽  
Free Electron Laser ◽  
Second Harmonic ◽  
Night Vision ◽  
Salt Crystallization ◽  
Time Resolved ◽  
Batch Crystallization ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Vapour Diffusion ◽  
Serial Crystallography

Rhodopsin is a membrane protein from the G protein-coupled receptor family. Together with its ligand retinal, it forms the visual pigment responsible for night vision. In order to perform ultrafast dynamics studies, a time-resolved serial femtosecond crystallography method is required owing to the nonreversible activation of rhodopsin. In such an approach, microcrystals in suspension are delivered into the X-ray pulses of an X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) after a precise photoactivation delay. Here, a millilitre batch production of high-density microcrystals was developed by four methodical conversion steps starting from known vapour-diffusion crystallization protocols: (i) screening the low-salt crystallization conditions preferred for serial crystallography by vapour diffusion, (ii) optimization of batch crystallization, (iii) testing the crystal size and quality using second-harmonic generation (SHG) imaging and X-ray powder diffraction and (iv) production of millilitres of rhodopsin crystal suspension in batches for serial crystallography tests; these crystals diffracted at an XFEL at the Linac Coherent Light Source using a liquid-jet setup.

scholarly journals In vivo crystallography at X-ray free-electron lasers: the next generation of structural biology?

2014 ◽  
Vol 369 (1647) ◽  
pp. 20130497 ◽  
Author(s):  
François-Xavier Gallat ◽  
Naohiro Matsugaki ◽  
Nathan P. Coussens ◽  
Koichiro J. Yagi ◽  
Marion Boudes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Structural Biology ◽  
Free Electron ◽  
Free Electron Laser ◽  
Protein Crystal ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Sample Characterization ◽  
The One ◽  
Serial Femtosecond Crystallography

The serendipitous discovery of the spontaneous growth of protein crystals inside cells has opened the field of crystallography to chemically unmodified samples directly available from their natural environment. On the one hand, through in vivo crystallography, protocols for protein crystal preparation can be highly simplified, although the technique suffers from difficulties in sampling, particularly in the extraction of the crystals from the cells partly due to their small sizes. On the other hand, the extremely intense X-ray pulses emerging from X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) sources, along with the appearance of serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) is a milestone for radiation damage-free protein structural studies but requires micrometre-size crystals. The combination of SFX with in vivo crystallography has the potential to boost the applicability of these techniques, eventually bringing the field to the point where in vitro sample manipulations will no longer be required, and direct imaging of the crystals from within the cells will be achievable. To fully appreciate the diverse aspects of sample characterization, handling and analysis, SFX experiments at the Japanese SPring-8 angstrom compact free-electron laser were scheduled on various types of in vivo grown crystals. The first experiments have demonstrated the feasibility of the approach and suggest that future in vivo crystallography applications at XFELs will be another alternative to nano-crystallography.

scholarly journals Serial crystallography onin vivogrown microcrystals using synchrotron radiation

IUCrJ ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cornelius Gati ◽  
Gleb Bourenkov ◽  
Marco Klinge ◽  
Dirk Rehders ◽  
Francesco Stellato ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Structural Model ◽  
Array Detector ◽  
Biological Macromolecules ◽  
Data Set ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Pixel Array ◽  
Structure Determinations ◽  
Serial Crystallography ◽  
Serial Femtosecond Crystallography

Crystal structure determinations of biological macromolecules are limited by the availability of sufficiently sized crystals and by the fact that crystal quality deteriorates during data collection owing to radiation damage. Exploiting a micrometre-sized X-ray beam, high-precision diffractometry and shutterless data acquisition with a pixel-array detector, a strategy for collecting data from many micrometre-sized crystals presented to an X-ray beam in a vitrified suspension is demonstrated. By combining diffraction data from 80Trypanosoma bruceiprocathepsin B crystals with an average volume of 9 µm3, a complete data set to 3.0 Å resolution has been assembled. The data allowed the refinement of a structural model that is consistent with that previously obtained using free-electron laser radiation, providing mutual validation. Further improvements of the serial synchrotron crystallography technique and its combination with serial femtosecond crystallography are discussed that may allow the determination of high-resolution structures of micrometre-sized crystals.

scholarly journals Pump-Probe Time-Resolved Serial Femtosecond Crystallography at SACLA: Current Status and Data Collection Strategies

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (24) ◽  
pp. 5505 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eriko Nango ◽  
Minoru Kubo ◽  
Kensuke Tono ◽  
So Iwata
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Free Electron ◽  
Free Electron Laser ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Optical Pump ◽  
Time Resolved ◽  
Pump Probe ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Collection Strategies ◽  
Serial Femtosecond Crystallography

Structural information on protein dynamics is a critical factor in fully understanding the protein functions. Pump-probe time-resolved serial femtosecond crystallography (TR-SFX) is a recently established technique for visualizing the structural changes or reactions in proteins that are at work with high spatial and temporal resolution. In the pump-probe method, protein microcrystals are continuously delivered from an injector and exposed to an X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) pulse after a trigger to initiate a reaction, such as light, chemicals, temperature, and electric field, which affords the structural snapshots of intermediates that occur in the protein. We are in the process of developing the device and techniques for pump-probe TR-SFX while using XFEL produced at SPring-8 Angstrom Compact Free-Electron Laser (SACLA). In this paper, we described our current development details and data collection strategies for the optical pump X-ray probe TR-SFX experiment at SACLA and then reported the techniques of in crystallo TR spectroscopy, which is useful in clarifying the nature of reaction that takes place in crystals in advance.

scholarly journals Nanosecond pump–probe device for time-resolved serial femtosecond crystallography developed at SACLA

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 1086-1091 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minoru Kubo ◽  
Eriko Nango ◽  
Kensuke Tono ◽  
Tetsunari Kimura ◽  
Shigeki Owada ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Conformational Changes ◽  
Free Electron ◽  
Good Choice ◽  
Cubic Phase ◽  
Liquid Droplets ◽  
Optical Pump ◽  
Time Resolved ◽  
X Ray ◽  
X Ray Crystallography ◽  
Serial Femtosecond Crystallography

X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) have opened new opportunities for time-resolved X-ray crystallography. Here a nanosecond optical-pump XFEL-probe device developed for time-resolved serial femtosecond crystallography (TR-SFX) studies of photo-induced reactions in proteins at the SPring-8 Angstrom Compact free-electron LAser (SACLA) is reported. The optical-fiber-based system is a good choice for a quick setup in a limited beam time and allows pump illumination from two directions to achieve high excitation efficiency of protein microcrystals. Two types of injectors are used: one for extruding highly viscous samples such as lipidic cubic phase (LCP) and the other for pulsed liquid droplets. Under standard sample flow conditions from the viscous-sample injector, delay times from nanoseconds to tens of milliseconds are accessible, typical time scales required to study large protein conformational changes. A first demonstration of a TR-SFX experiment on bacteriorhodopsin in bicelle using a setup with a droplet-type injector is also presented.

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