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Researchers for years have been attempting to look at ultrafast motions at the atomic level, for example how light gets transferred into energy by plants during photosynthesis. Finally, with the use of an X-ray Free Electron Laser at Stanford, NSF BioXFEL Science and Technology researchers and collaborators from three other universities have been successful in fully exploiting the power of this instrumentation and have created a molecular motion ‘movie’ on the femtosecond time scale. 

Videos from the 2015 Phenix Workshop at Rice University held on April 9th and 10th are now available online through BioXFEL.org. Phenix developers Pavel Afonine, Paul Adams, and Tom Terwilliger discuss topics such as experimental phasing, molecular replacement, structure refinement, and model validation.

We push the resolution of macromolecular serial femtosecond crystallography to 1.46 Å. Anisotropic B-factor refinement starts to become possible with SFX data at that resolution. The structures show little to no evidence of radiation damage even at ambient temperatures and are comparable to ultrahigh (atomic) resolution structures.

BioXFEL Scientific Director Dr. John Spece has been appointed fellow of the prestigious Royal Society for his innovative world-leading contributions to both biology and materials science.