Megahertz pulse trains enable multi-hit serial femtosecond crystallography experiments at X-ray free electron lasers.
Susannah HolmesHenry J KirkwoodRichard BeanKlaus GiewekemeyerAndrew V MartinMarjan Hadian-JaziMax O WiedornDominik OberthürHugh MarmanLuigi AdrianoNasser Al-QudamiSasa BajtImrich BarákSadia BariJohan BieleckiSandor BrockhauserMathew A ColemanFrancisco Cruz-MazoCyril DanilevskiKaterina DörnerAlfonso Miguel Gañán-CalvoRita GraceffaHans FangohrMichael HeymannMatthias FrankAlexander KaukherYoonhee KimBostjan KobeJuraj KnoškaTorsten LaurusRomain LetrunLuis MaiaMarc MesserschmidtMarkus MetzThomas MichelatGrant MillsSerguei MolodtsovDiana C F MonteiroAndrew J MorganAstrid MünnichGisel Esperanza Pena MurilloGianpietro PrevitaliAdam R RoundTokushi SatoRobin SchubertJoachim SchulzMegan ShelbyCarolin SeuringJonas A SellbergMarcin SikorskiAlessandro SilenziStephan SternJola Sztuk-DambietzJanusz SzubaMartin TrebbinPatrick VagovicThomas VeBritta WeinhausenKrzysztof WronaPaul Lourdu XavierChen XuOleksandr YefanovKeith A NugentHenry N ChapmanAdrian P MancusoAnton BartyBrian AbbeyConnie DarmaninPublished in: Nature communications (2022)
The European X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) and Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) II are extremely intense sources of X-rays capable of generating Serial Femtosecond Crystallography (SFX) data at megahertz (MHz) repetition rates. Previous work has shown that it is possible to use consecutive X-ray pulses to collect diffraction patterns from individual crystals. Here, we exploit the MHz pulse structure of the European XFEL to obtain two complete datasets from the same lysozyme crystal, first hit and the second hit, before it exits the beam. The two datasets, separated by <1 µs, yield up to 2.1 Å resolution structures. Comparisons between the two structures reveal no indications of radiation damage or significant changes within the active site, consistent with the calculated dose estimates. This demonstrates MHz SFX can be used as a tool for tracking sub-microsecond structural changes in individual single crystals, a technique we refer to as multi-hit SFX.