Figure 4: Femtosecond single-shot XFEL imaging of an RNA microsponge.

(a) A single-shot femtosecond speckle pattern of an RNAi microsponge is obtained at SACLA. (b) Reconstructed image from (a) shows the projected electron density. The colour bar displays the linear density scale in arbitrary unit. (c) An SEM image of a similarly structured, though larger, RNAi microsponge is shown. (d) A histogram of the electron density distribution of the small RNAi (blue) (b) is shown, compared with the density distribution of large RNAi (cyan) (Fig. 1b). The broken red lines represent the average of histograms from large RNAi microsponges imaged at SPring-8 (Supplementary Fig. 2). Scale bar, 10 μm−1, 250 nm and 500 nm (a–c), respectively.