Fixed-target serial crystallography at the Structural Biology Center.

Serial synchrotron crystallography enables the study of protein structures under physiological temperature and reduced radiation damage by collection of data from thousands of crystals. The Structural Biology Center at Sector 19 of the Advanced Photon Source has implemented a fixed-target approach with a new 3D-printed mesh-holder optimized for sample handling. The holder immobilizes a crystal suspension or droplet emulsion on a nylon mesh, trapping and sealing a near-monolayer of crystals in its mother liquor between two thin Mylar films.

Radiation decay of thaumatin crystals at three X-ray energies.

Radiation damage is an unavoidable obstacle in X-ray crystallographic data collection for macromolecular structure determination, so it is important to know how much radiation a sample can endure before being degraded beyond an acceptable limit. In the literature, the threshold at which the average intensity of all recorded reflections decreases to a certain fraction of the initial value is called the `dose limit'. The first estimated D50 dose-limit value, at which the average diffracted intensity was reduced to 50%, was 20 MGy and was derived from observing sample decay in electron-diffraction experiments.

How good can our beamlines be?

The accuracy of X-ray diffraction data depends on the properties of the crystalline sample and on the performance of the data-collection facility (synchrotron beamline elements, goniostat, detector etc.). However, it is difficult to evaluate the level of performance of the experimental setup from the quality of data sets collected in rotation mode, as various crystal properties such as mosaicity, non-uniformity and radiation damage affect the measured intensities.