Biological Imaging by Soft X-ray Diffraction Microscopy

Overview

Journal Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

Specialty Science

Date 2005 Oct 13

PMID 16219701

Citations 75

Authors

David Shapiro

Pierre Thibault

Tobias Beetz

Veit Elser

Malcolm Howells

Chris Jacobsen

Janos Kirz

Enju Lima

Huijie Miao

Aaron M Neiman

David Sayre

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

We have used the method of x-ray diffraction microscopy to image the complex-valued exit wave of an intact and unstained yeast cell. The images of the freeze-dried cell, obtained by using 750-eV x-rays from different angular orientations, portray several of the cell's major internal components to 30-nm resolution. The good agreement among the independently recovered structures demonstrates the accuracy of the imaging technique. To obtain the best possible reconstructions, we have implemented procedures for handling noisy and incomplete diffraction data, and we propose a method for determining the reconstructed resolution. This work represents a previously uncharacterized application of x-ray diffraction microscopy to a specimen of this complexity and provides confidence in the feasibility of the ultimate goal of imaging biological specimens at 10-nm resolution in three dimensions.

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