scholarly journals The Single Particles, Clusters and Biomolecules and Serial Femtosecond Crystallography instrument of the European XFEL: initial installation

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 660-676 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian P. Mancuso ◽  
Andrew Aquila ◽  
Lewis Batchelor ◽  
Richard J. Bean ◽  
Johan Bielecki ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Structure Determination ◽  
High Repetition Rate ◽  
Optical Systems ◽  
Diagnostic Tools ◽  
Imaging Method ◽  
Single Particles ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Data Rates ◽  
Serial Crystallography ◽  
Serial Femtosecond Crystallography

The European X-ray Free-Electron Laser (FEL) became the first operational high-repetition-rate hard X-ray FEL with first lasing in May 2017. Biological structure determination has already benefitted from the unique properties and capabilities of X-ray FELs, predominantly through the development and application of serial crystallography. The possibility of now performing such experiments at data rates more than an order of magnitude greater than previous X-ray FELs enables not only a higher rate of discovery but also new classes of experiments previously not feasible at lower data rates. One example is time-resolved experiments requiring a higher number of time steps for interpretation, or structure determination from samples with low hit rates in conventional X-ray FEL serial crystallography. Following first lasing at the European XFEL, initial commissioning and operation occurred at two scientific instruments, one of which is the Single Particles, Clusters and Biomolecules and Serial Femtosecond Crystallography (SPB/SFX) instrument. This instrument provides a photon energy range, focal spot sizes and diagnostic tools necessary for structure determination of biological specimens. The instrumentation explicitly addresses serial crystallography and the developing single particle imaging method as well as other forward-scattering and diffraction techniques. This paper describes the major science cases of SPB/SFX and its initial instrumentation – in particular its optical systems, available sample delivery methods, 2D detectors, supporting optical laser systems and key diagnostic components. The present capabilities of the instrument will be reviewed and a brief outlook of its future capabilities is also described.

scholarly journals NSLS-II MX beamlines FMX for micro-crystallography & AMX for highly automated MX

2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (a1) ◽  
pp. C1733-C1733
Author(s):  
Martin Fuchs ◽  
Robert Sweet ◽  
Lonny Berman ◽  
Dileep Bhogadi ◽  
Wayne Hendrickson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Energy Range ◽  
Structure Determination ◽  
Optical Systems ◽  
Photon Flux ◽  
X Rays ◽  
Macromolecular Crystallography ◽  
Binding Studies ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Array Detectors ◽  
Broad Energy Range

We present the final design of the x-ray optical systems and experimental stations of the two macromolecular crystallography (MX) beamlines, FMX and AMX, at the National Synchrotron Light Source-II (NSLS-II). Along with its companion x-ray scattering beamline, LIX, this suite of Advanced Beamlines for Biological Investigations with X-rays (ABBIX, [1]) will begin user operation in 2016. The pair of MX beamlines with complementary and overlapping capabilities is located at canted undulators (IVU21) in sector 17-ID. The Frontier Microfocusing Macromolecular Crystallography beamline (FMX) will deliver a photon flux of ~5x10^12 ph/s at a wavelength of 1 Å into a spot of 1 - 50 µm size. It will cover a broad energy range from 5 - 30 keV, corresponding to wavelengths from 0.4 - 2.5 Å. The highly Automated Macromolecular Crystallography beamline (AMX) will be optimized for high throughput applications, with beam sizes from 4 - 100 µm, an energy range of 5 - 18 keV (0.7 - 2.5 Å), and a flux at 1 Å of ~10^13 ph/s. Central components of the in-house-developed experimental stations are a 100 nm sphere of confusion goniometer with a horizontal axis, piezo-slits to provide dynamic beam size changes during diffraction experiments, a dedicated secondary goniometer for crystallization plates, and sample- and plate-changing robots. FMX and AMX will support a broad range of biomedical structure determination methods from serial crystallography on micron-sized crystals, to structure determination of complexes in large unit cells, to rapid sample screening and data collection of crystals in trays, for instance to characterize membrane protein crystals and to conduct ligand-binding studies. Together with the solution scattering program at LIX, the new beamlines will offer unique opportunities for advanced diffraction experiments with micro- and mini-beams, with next generation hybrid pixel array detectors and emerging crystal delivery methods such as acoustic droplet ejection. This work is supported by the US National Institutes of Health.

scholarly journals Femtosecond X-ray diffraction from an aerosolized beam of protein nanocrystals

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Salah Awel ◽  
Richard A. Kirian ◽  
Max O. Wiedorn ◽  
Kenneth R. Beyerlein ◽  
Nils Roth ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Repetition Rate ◽  
Bragg Diffraction ◽  
Liquid Jet ◽  
X Ray Diffraction ◽  
Single Particles ◽  
Jet Injection ◽  
X Ray ◽  
High Repetition ◽  
High Particle ◽  
X Ray Scattering

High-resolution Bragg diffraction from aerosolized single granulovirus nanocrystals using an X-ray free-electron laser is demonstrated. The outer dimensions of the in-vacuum aerosol injector components are identical to conventional liquid-microjet nozzles used in serial diffraction experiments, which allows the injector to be utilized with standard mountings. As compared with liquid-jet injection, the X-ray scattering background is reduced by several orders of magnitude by the use of helium carrier gas rather than liquid. Such reduction is required for diffraction measurements of small macromolecular nanocrystals and single particles. High particle speeds are achieved, making the approach suitable for use at upcoming high-repetition-rate facilities.

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.

The SASE1 X-ray beam transport system

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 692-699 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Sinn ◽  
M. Dommach ◽  
B. Dickert ◽  
M. Di Felice ◽  
X. Dong ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Transport System ◽  
Initial Configuration ◽  
First Year ◽  
Beam Transport ◽  
Single Particles ◽  
Optical Components ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Scientific Experiment ◽  
Serial Femtosecond Crystallography

SASE1 is the first beamline of the European XFEL that became operational in 2017. It consists of the SASE1 undulator system, the beam transport system, and the two scientific experiment stations: Single Particles, Clusters, and Biomolecules and Serial Femtosecond Crystallography (SPB/SFX), and Femtosecond X-ray Experiments (FXE). The beam transport system comprises mirrors to offset and guide the beam to the instruments and a set of X-ray optical components to align, manipulate and diagnose the beam. The SASE1 beam transport system is described here in its initial configuration, and results and experiences from the first year of user operation are reported.

scholarly journals CrystFEL: a software suite for snapshot serial crystallography

2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas A. White ◽  
Richard A. Kirian ◽  
Andrew V. Martin ◽  
Andrew Aquila ◽  
Karol Nass ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Structural Information ◽  
Software Suite ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Small Crystals ◽  
Serial Crystallography ◽  
Diffraction Patterns ◽  
Complicated Geometries ◽  
Serial Femtosecond Crystallography

In order to address the specific needs of the emerging technique of `serial femtosecond crystallography', in which structural information is obtained from small crystals illuminated by an X-ray free-electron laser, a new software suite has been created. The constituent programs deal with viewing, indexing, integrating, merging and evaluating the quality of the data, and also simulating patterns. The specific challenges addressed chiefly concern the indexing and integration of large numbers of diffraction patterns in an automated manner, and so the software is designed to be fast and to make use of multi-core hardware. Other constituent programs deal with the merging and scaling of large numbers of intensities from randomly oriented snapshot diffraction patterns. The suite uses a generalized representation of a detector to ease the use of more complicated geometries than those familiar in conventional crystallography. The suite is written in C with supporting Perl and shell scripts, and is available as source code under version 3 or later of the GNU General Public License.

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 Membrane protein structure determination by SAD, SIR, or SIRAS phasing in serial femtosecond crystallography using an iododetergent

2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (46) ◽  
pp. 13039-13044 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takanori Nakane ◽  
Shinya Hanashima ◽  
Mamoru Suzuki ◽  
Haruka Saiki ◽  
Taichi Hayashi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Membrane Protein ◽  
Structure Determination ◽  
Free Electron ◽  
Heavy Atom ◽  
Anomalous Scattering ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Isomorphous Replacement ◽  
Experimental Phasing ◽  
Serial Femtosecond Crystallography

The 3D structure determination of biological macromolecules by X-ray crystallography suffers from a phase problem: to perform Fourier transformation to calculate real space density maps, both intensities and phases of structure factors are necessary; however, measured diffraction patterns give only intensities. Although serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) using X-ray free electron lasers (XFELs) has been steadily developed since 2009, experimental phasing still remains challenging. Here, using 7.0-keV (1.771 Å) X-ray pulses from the SPring-8 Angstrom Compact Free Electron Laser (SACLA), iodine single-wavelength anomalous diffraction (SAD), single isomorphous replacement (SIR), and single isomorphous replacement with anomalous scattering (SIRAS) phasing were performed in an SFX regime for a model membrane protein bacteriorhodopsin (bR). The crystals grown in bicelles were derivatized with an iodine-labeled detergent heavy-atom additive 13a (HAD13a), which contains the magic triangle, I3C head group with three iodine atoms. The alkyl tail was essential for binding of the detergent to the surface of bR. Strong anomalous and isomorphous difference signals from HAD13a enabled successful phasing using reflections up to 2.1-Å resolution from only 3,000 and 4,000 indexed images from native and derivative crystals, respectively. When more images were merged, structure solution was possible with data truncated at 3.3-Å resolution, which is the lowest resolution among the reported cases of SFX phasing. Moreover, preliminary SFX experiment showed that HAD13a successfully derivatized the G protein-coupled A2a adenosine receptor crystallized in lipidic cubic phases. These results pave the way for de novo structure determination of membrane proteins, which often diffract poorly, even with the brightest XFEL beams.

scholarly journals Rapid sample delivery for megahertz serial crystallography at X-ray FELs

IUCrJ ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 574-584 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max O. Wiedorn ◽  
Salah Awel ◽  
Andrew J. Morgan ◽  
Kartik Ayyer ◽  
Yaroslav Gevorkov ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bragg Diffraction ◽  
X Rays ◽  
Free Electron Lasers ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Damaged Material ◽  
Optical Images ◽  
Subsequent Measurement ◽  
Serial Crystallography ◽  
Liquid Microjets ◽  
Serial Femtosecond Crystallography

Liquid microjets are a common means of delivering protein crystals to the focus of X-ray free-electron lasers (FELs) for serial femtosecond crystallography measurements. The high X-ray intensity in the focus initiates an explosion of the microjet and sample. With the advent of X-ray FELs with megahertz rates, the typical velocities of these jets must be increased significantly in order to replenish the damaged material in time for the subsequent measurement with the next X-ray pulse. This work reports the results of a megahertz serial diffraction experiment at the FLASH FEL facility using 4.3 nm radiation. The operation of gas-dynamic nozzles that produce liquid microjets with velocities greater than 80 m s−1 was demonstrated. Furthermore, this article provides optical images of X-ray-induced explosions together with Bragg diffraction from protein microcrystals exposed to trains of X-ray pulses repeating at rates of up to 4.5 MHz. The results indicate the feasibility for megahertz serial crystallography measurements with hard X-rays and give guidance for the design of such experiments.

scholarly journals Serial Femtosecond Crystallography user's consortium apparatus at European XFEL

2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (a1) ◽  
pp. C1748-C1748
Author(s):  
Marc Messerschmidt ◽  
Leonard Chavas ◽  
Sunil Ananthaneni ◽  
Hamidreza Dadgostar ◽  
Heinz Graafsma ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Protein Crystal ◽  
Pixel Detector ◽  
Single Particles ◽  
Time Resolved ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Overall Design ◽  
Laser Facility ◽  
Common Problems ◽  
Automated Procedures ◽  
Serial Femtosecond Crystallography

The Serial Femtosecond Crystallography (SFX) user's consortium apparatus is to be installed within the Single Particles, Clusters and Biomolecules (SPB) instrument of the European X-ray Free-Electron Laser facility (XFEL.EU) [1, 2]. The XFEL.EU will provide ultra-short, highly intense, coherent X-ray pulses at an unprecedented repetition rate. The experimental setup and methodological approaches of many scientific areas will be transformed, including structural biology that could potentially overcome common problems and bottlenecks encountered in crystallography, such as creating large crystals, dealing with radiation damage, or understanding sub-picosecond time-resolved phenomena. The key concept of the SFX method is based on the kinetic insertion of protein crystal samples in solution via a gas dynamic virtual nozzle jet and recording diffraction signals of individual, randomly oriented crystals passing through the XFEL beam, as first demonstrated by Chapman et al. [3]. The SFX-apparatus will refocus the beam spent by the SPB instrument into a second interaction region, in some cases enabling two parallel experiments. The planned photon energy range at the SPB instrument is from 3 to 16 keV. The Adaptive Gain Integrating Pixel Detector (AGIPD) is to be implemented in the SPB instrument, including a 4 Megapixel version for the SFX-apparatus. The AGIPD is designed to store over 350 data frames from successive pulses, and aims to collect more than 3,000 images per second. Together with the implementation of automated procedures for sample exchange and injection, high-throughput nanocrystallography experiments can be integrated at the SFX-apparatus. In this work, we review the overall design of the SFX-apparatus and discuss the main parameters and challenges

scholarly journals Pink-beam serial femtosecond crystallography for accurate structure-factor determination at an X-ray free-electron laser

IUCrJ ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Karol Nass ◽  
Camila Bacellar ◽  
Claudio Cirelli ◽  
Florian Dworkowski ◽  
Yaroslav Gevorkov ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Data Quality ◽  
Structure Determination ◽  
Structure Factor ◽  
Free Electron ◽  
Free Electron Laser ◽  
De Novo ◽  
Similar Data ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Redundant Data ◽  
Serial Femtosecond Crystallography

Serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) at X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) enables essentially radiation-damage-free macromolecular structure determination using microcrystals that are too small for synchrotron studies. However, SFX experiments often require large amounts of sample in order to collect highly redundant data where some of the many stochastic errors can be averaged out to determine accurate structure-factor amplitudes. In this work, the capability of the Swiss X-ray free-electron laser (SwissFEL) was used to generate large-bandwidth X-ray pulses [Δλ/λ = 2.2% full width at half-maximum (FWHM)], which were applied in SFX with the aim of improving the partiality of Bragg spots and thus decreasing sample consumption while maintaining the data quality. Sensitive data-quality indicators such as anomalous signal from native thaumatin micro-crystals and de novo phasing results were used to quantify the benefits of using pink X-ray pulses to obtain accurate structure-factor amplitudes. Compared with data measured using the same setup but using X-ray pulses with typical quasi-monochromatic XFEL bandwidth (Δλ/λ = 0.17% FWHM), up to fourfold reduction in the number of indexed diffraction patterns required to obtain similar data quality was achieved. This novel approach, pink-beam SFX, facilitates the yet underutilized de novo structure determination of challenging proteins at XFELs, thereby opening the door to more scientific breakthroughs.

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