X-Ray Laser: first snapshots of single viruses
Portrait of a virus
X-Ray laser potential has been demonstrated at the world's first hard X-Ray Free Electron Laser LCLS at SLAC, Stanford University
From today's press releases at the lightsources.org
It has been a dream of researchers for over a decade: image biological materials at high resolution using incredibly intense X-ray laser pulses. Calculations had long predicted that these blasts of X-rays would allow exquisite measurements of the molecular structure of biological objects, from samples too small to be studied by conventional methods.
The results, published February 3 in two papers in Nature, open a way for obtaining the molecular structures of proteins and viruses without the requirement of high-quality crystals.