First Single-shot Images of Intact Viruses (IMAGE)

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

First Single-shot Images of Intact Viruses

Caption

The experimentally measured X-ray diffraction pattern of a single Mimivirus particle, imaged at the Linac Coherent Light Source, the world's first hard X-ray free-electron laser, located at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Very short and extremely bright X-ray pulses can be used to obtain a single diffraction pattern from a large macromolecule, a virus or a cell before the sample explodes and turns into plasma. The structure of the virus can be determined from such patterns. In this study, the X-ray pulse lasted a millionth of a billionth of a second and heated the virus to 100,000 degrees Celsius, but not before this image was obtained.

Credit

Janos Hajdu (Uppsala University)

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