Amyloid diffraction at XFELs

Program Description

Amyloid fibers are formed when segments of proteins self-assemble into long fibers, and have long been implicated in various degenerative diseases.   Many techniques have been used to study Amyloids but of the vast majority of Amyloid structures remain unknown.   Synchrotron fiber diffraction must average over large fiber bundles to obtain sufficient signal, but the ensemble averaged data has been insufficient to determine the detailed packing structure of individual fibers.  The high peak flux of Free Electron Lasers provides the ability to study unprecedently small numbers of fibers.  We present recent results of experiments in the nanofocus sample environment at the Coherent X-ray Imaging instrument of LCLS of various amyloid forming systems.