Abstract
The science of X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) critically depends on the performance of the X-ray laser and on the quality of the samples placed into the X-ray beam. The stability of biological samples is limited and key biomolecular transformations occur on short timescales. Experiments in biology require a support laboratory in the immediate vicinity of the beamlines. The XBI BioLab of the European XFEL (XBI denotes XFEL Biology Infrastructure) is an integrated user facility connected to the beamlines for supporting a wide range of biological experiments. The laboratory was financed and built by a collaboration between the European XFEL and the XBI User Consortium, whose members come from Finland, Germany, the Slovak Republic, Sweden and the USA, with observers from Denmark and the Russian Federation. Arranged around a central wet laboratory, the XBI BioLab provides facilities for sample preparation and scoring, laboratories for growing prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, a Bio Safety Level 2 laboratory, sample purification and characterization facilities, a crystallization laboratory, an anaerobic laboratory, an aerosol laboratory, a vacuum laboratory for injector tests, and laboratories for optical microscopy, atomic force microscopy and electron microscopy. Here, an overview of the XBI facility is given and some of the results of the first user experiments are highlighted.
Highlights
Ultra-short and extremely bright coherent X-ray pulses from X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) open up unprecedented research opportunities in physics, chemistry and biology
Owing to the megahertz pulse trains and the femtosecond pulse duration of the EuXFEL, the instrument is highly suited for time-resolved experiments of proteins in action, with the ability to yield structures of shortlived intermediates which cannot be obtained by other methods
single-particle imaging (SPI) experiments performed at XFELs have already produced proof-ofprinciple single-shot coherent diffraction images of viruses (Ekeberg et al, 2016; Seibert et al, 2011; Sobolev et al, 2020), bacteriophages (Kassemeyer et al, 2012), cell organelles (Hantke et al, 2014) and cyanobacteria that were alive at the time they were hit by the X-rays
Summary
Ultra-short and extremely bright coherent X-ray pulses from X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) open up unprecedented research opportunities in physics, chemistry and biology. Intense femtosecond X-ray pulses can outrun key damage processes in the sample and allow researchers to obtain interpretable diffraction patterns beyond conventional damage limits through ‘diffraction before destruction’. Biological processes occur over multiple orders of magnitude in time and over multiple levels of structural organization and from atoms to molecules and cells and beyond. XFEL studies may include capturing femtosecond intermediates in photochemical reactions and experiments on viral infections or on programmed cell death. The support laboratory has to satisfy a significantly wider range of requirements than most remote home laboratories, to allow rapid sample delivery to the XFEL instruments
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