Aerosol delivery-based serial femtosecond crystallography

Serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) has revolutionised structural biology by enabling direct visualization of conformational dynamics of biomacromolecules at near-physiological temperatures. However, conventional SFX sample delivery at X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) facilities introduces a significant X-ray scattering background, which may limit the data quality and resolution. Here, we introduce an aerosol delivery-based method that drastically reduces the back-ground scattering by minimising the liquid environment surrounding the nanocrystals. We validate our method by solving the structure of Cydia pomonella granulovirus nanocrystals at 1.9 [A] resolution, achieving orders-of-magni