Structure determination from single molecule X-ray scattering with three photons per image

Benjamin Ardenne, Martin Mechelke and Helmut Grubmüller ()
Additional contact information
Benjamin Ardenne: Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry
Martin Mechelke: Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry
Helmut Grubmüller: Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry

Nature Communications, 2018, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Scattering experiments with femtosecond high-intensity free-electron laser pulses provide a new route to macromolecular structure determination. While currently limited to nano-crystals or virus particles, the ultimate goal is scattering on single biomolecules. The main challenges in these experiments are the extremely low signal-to-noise ratio due to the very low expected photon count per scattering image, often well below 100, as well as the random orientation of the molecule in each shot. Here we present a de novo correlation-based approach and show that three coherently scattered photons per image suffice for structure determination. Using synthetic scattering data of a small protein, we demonstrate near-atomic resolution of 3.3 Å using 3.3 × 1010 coherently scattered photons from 3.3 × 109 images, which is within experimental reach. Further, our three-photon correlation approach is robust to additional noise from incoherent scattering; the number of disordered solvent molecules attached to the macromolecular surface should be kept small.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04830-4 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-04830-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-04830-4

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().