Speaker: Prof. Inger Andersson, Department of Molecular Biology, Swedish University of Agricultural Science, Uppsala, Sweden. Date: 2011-11-02 Time: 14:15 Place: Chemistry Department, Lecture Hall B, Getingevägen 60, 222 41 LUND.

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Abstract: Much of what we know about the detailed structure of biomolecules, including proteins and DNA and RNA has come through the use of X-ray diffraction. Synchrotron radiation has revolutionized this field in the past three decades, enabling the study of larger and more complex systems at increasingly higher levels of resolution and on smaller and smaller crystals. However, structure determination of individual cells and organelles has proven intractable using conventional structural etermination techniques: these are nonreproducible and do not crystallize, thus cannot be imaged using X-ray crystallography. A large fraction are also unsuitable for 3D cryo-electron-microscopy. Ultra short coherent X-ray pulses from X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) offer the potential for imaging nanocrystals as well as non-crystalline biological (and other)materials. The presentation will describe the most important advances in light of the development of X-ray sources.