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The presence of guest atoms—known as rattlers—in the cages of some clathrate structures is considered to be responsible for the low thermal conductivity of the materials. Neutron spectroscopy provides important evidence regarding the actual phonon dispersion in the material, and the precise way in which this is influenced by rattlers.

Lipidic sponge phase crystallization yields membrane protein microcrystals that can be injected into an X-ray free electron laser beam, yielding diffraction patterns that can be processed to recover the crystal structure.

Researchers describe a mechanism capable of compressing fast and intense X-ray pulses through the rapid loss of crystalline periodicity. It is hoped that this concept, combined with X-ray free-electron laser technology, will allow scientists to obtain structural information at atomic resolutions.

Imaging live cells at nanometre resolution is challenging because radiation damage kills the cells during exposure. Here, the authors overcome this difficulty in a ‘diffraction before destruction’ experiment using an X-ray laser and record signal to 4 nm resolution on a free-flying cell.

Analysis of human genotypes and 16S microbiome data of 18,473 individuals from 25 cohorts through a genome-wide association study, a phenome-wide association study and Mendelian randomization identifies host genetic and microbial trait associations.

70,000 diffraction patterns captured over twelve minutes at the Linac Coherent Light Source yield reconstructions of the smallest single biological objects imaged with an X-ray laser.

The new European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser (EuXFEL) is the first XFEL that generates X-ray pulses with a megahertz inter-pulse spacing. Here the authors demonstrate that high-quality and damage-free protein structures can be obtained with the currently available 1.1 MHz repetition rate pulses using lysozyme as a test case and furthermore present a β-lactamase structure.

The start-up of the new femtosecond hard X-ray laser facility in Stanford, the Linac Coherent Light Source, has brought high expectations for a new era for biological imaging. The intense, ultrashort X-ray pulses allow diffraction imaging of small structures before radiation damage occurs. This new capability is tested for the problem of structure determination from nanocrystals of macromolecules that cannot be grown in large crystals. Over three million diffraction patterns were collected from a stream of nanocrystals of the membrane protein complex photosystem I, which allowed the assembly of a three-dimensional data set for this protein, and proves the concept of this imaging technique.

The start-up of the new femtosecond hard X-ray laser facility in Stanford, the Linac Coherent Light Source, has brought high expectations for a new era for biological imaging. The intense, ultrashort X-ray pulses allow diffraction imaging of small structures before radiation damage occurs. This new capability is tested for the problem of imaging a non-crystalline biological sample. Images of mimivirus are obtained, the largest known virus with a total diameter of about 0.75 micrometres, by injecting a beam of cooled mimivirus particles into the X-ray beam. The measurements indicate no damage during imaging and prove the concept of this imaging technique.

Femtosecond X-ray Fourier holography imaging with record-high lateral resolution below 20 nm is demonstrated. Phase information is encoded into the interference of the diffraction patterns of a reference particle with a measurement sample.

Expression of a protein in Sf9 insect cells at high concentration triggers formation of in vivo crystals that can be analyzed by serial femtosecond X-ray crystallography.

Generating ultrashort spectrally tunable pulses via high-harmonic generation (HHG) enables matching the excitation photon energy to the characteristic resonance of the sample to study its ultrafast dynamics. The authors demonstrate a compact continuously tunable high-intensity VUV HHG source that can rival state-of-the-art seeded FELs.

Diffraction experiments using high energy X-rays are used to determine molecular structures at high resolution, and with new free electron lasers diffraction experiments on non-crystalline samples are becoming achievable. The authors present a statistical method to identify hit events in flash X-ray imaging experiments of macromolecular complex and demonstrate it on RNA polymerase data.

Diffractive imaging of single-particle nanoscale systems has so far been hindered by low hit probabilities and repetition rates. Here, single-particle imaging of nanospheres and viruses at megahertz repetition rates is demonstrated at the European X-ray Free-Electron Laser (XFEL) for the first time.