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Publication Abstract from PubMed

Fixed-target serial femtosecond crystallography (FT-SFX) was an important advance in crystallography by dramatically reducing sample consumption, while maintaining the benefits of SFX for obtaining crystal structures at room temperature without radiation damage. Despite a number of advantages, preparation of a sample holder for the sample delivery in FT-SFX with the use of many crystals in a single mount at ambient temperature is challenging as it can be complicated and costly, and thus, development of an efficient sample holder is essential. In this study, we introduced a nylon mesh-based sample holder enclosed by a polyimide film. This sample holder can be rapidly manufactured using a commercially available nylon mesh with pores of a desired size at a low cost without challenging technology. Furthermore, this simple device is highly efficient in data acquisition. We performed FT-SFX using a nylon mesh-based sample holder and collected over 130,000 images on a single sample holder using a 30 Hz X-ray pulse for 1.2 h. We determined the crystal structures of lysozyme and glucose isomerase using the nylon mesh at 1.65 and 1.75 A, respectively. The nylon mesh exposed to X-rays produced very low levels of background scattering at 3.75 and 4.30 A, which are negligible for data analysis. Our method provides a simple and rapid but highly efficient way to deliver samples for FT-SFX.

Nylon mesh-based sample holder for fixed-target serial femtosecond crystallography.,Lee D, Baek S, Park J, Lee K, Kim J, Lee SJ, Chung WK, Lee JL, Cho Y, Nam KH Sci Rep. 2019 May 6;9(1):6971. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-43485-z. PMID:31061502^[1]

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.