posted on 2022-09-16, 06:38authored bySusannah Holmes, Henry J Kirkwood, Richard Bean, Klaus Giewekemeyer, Andrew Martin, Marjan Hadian Jazi, Max O Wiedorn, Dominik Oberthuer, Hugh Marman, Luigi Adriano, Nasser Al-Qudami, Sasa Bajt, Imrich Barak, Sadia Bari, Johan Bielecki, Sandor Brockhauser, Mathew A Coleman, Francisco Cruz-Mazo, Cyril Danilevski, Katerina Doerner, Alfonso M Ganan-Calvo, Rita Graceffa, Hans Fanghor, Michael Heymann, Matthias Frank, Alexander Kaukher, Yoonhee Kim, Bostjan Kobe, Juraj Knoska, Torsten Laurus, Romain Letrun, Luis Maia, Marc Messerschmidt, Markus Metz, Thomas Michelat, Grant Mills, Serguei Molodtsov, Diana CF Monteiro, Andrew J Morgan, Astrid Muennich, Gisel E Pena Murillo, Gianpietro Previtali, Adam Round, Tokushi Sato, Robin Schubert, Joachim Schulz, Megan Shelby, Carolin Seuring, Jonas A Sellberg, Marcin Sikorski, Alessandro Silenzi, Stephan Stern, Jola Sztuk-Dambietz, Janusz Szuba, Martin Trebbin, Patrick Vagovic, Thomas Ve, Britta Weinhausen, Krzysztof Wrona, Paul Lourdu Xavier, Chen Xu, Oleksandr Yefanov, Keith NugentKeith Nugent, Henry N Chapman, Adrian MancusoAdrian Mancuso, Anton Barty, Brian AbbeyBrian Abbey, Connie DarmaninConnie Darmanin
The European X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) and Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) II are extremely intense sources of X-rays capable of generating Serial Femtosecond Crystallography (SFX) data at megahertz (MHz) repetition rates. Previous work has shown that it is possible to use consecutive X-ray pulses to collect diffraction patterns from individual crystals. Here, we exploit the MHz pulse structure of the European XFEL to obtain two complete datasets from the same lysozyme crystal, first hit and the second hit, before it exits the beam. The two datasets, separated by <1 µs, yield up to 2.1 Å resolution structures. Comparisons between the two structures reveal no indications of radiation damage or significant changes within the active site, consistent with the calculated dose estimates. This demonstrates MHz SFX can be used as a tool for tracking sub-microsecond structural changes in individual single crystals, a technique we refer to as multi-hit SFX.