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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 43: Poster II
Q 43.24: Poster
Wednesday, March 20, 2013, 16:00–18:30, Empore Lichthof
Sample environments to image single molecules at the European XFEL Facility — Charlotte Uetrecht1,2, •Sadia Bari1, and Joachim Schulz1 — 1Sample Environment, European XFEL GmbH, Hamburg, Germany — 2Molecular Biophysics, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
Recent success in femtosecond X-ray protein nano-crystallography and imaging of single mimivirus particles demonstrate the prospects of free-electron lasers (FEL) for biophysics. X-ray FELs provide much higher peak powers than any synchrotron source. Due to the short fs pulses, diffraction patterns of a sample can be recorded before damaging occurs. Thereby, the major bottleneck in structural biology to obtain large high quality crystals may be overcome. Since the sample is destroyed by the X-ray pulse, a full dataset is recorded from constantly replenished sample. The technique can also be used to study structural changes in bioparticles in a time-resolved manner. We develop methodology for efficient delivery and X-ray interaction of bio-samples at European XFEL. The two methods currently available for this purpose, a liquid jet and an aerodynamic lens, both suffer from high sample consumption. Native mass spectrometry (MS) has a high potential to overcome this problem. Furthermore, it allows online separation of species from a mixture. Therefore, it is especially suited to selectively investigate the structures of reaction intermediates. We show an introduction to established sample delivery techniques, native MS in general and first considerations how such a spectrometer can be integrated at the SPB-instrument.