Department News

An international team of researchers from the MPSD (Max Planck institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter) at the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science in Hamburg, the University of Toronto (Canada), the Diamond Light Source in Oxford (UK) and the EMBL (European Molecular Biology Laboratory) Hamburg has found that two of the worlds brightest light sources have more in common than originally anticipated. Although they operate on very different timescales, synchrotrons and XFELs can produce data of equivalent quality as long as serial data collection is used in the imaging process. These findings open up a new avenue for collaborative applications. The team’s work has been published in Science Advances. more

MPSD researchers develop a new method for water diffraction in transmission electron microscopes. Their work has appeared as a featured article in the Journal of Chemical Physics. more

Electron spin is one of the most fundamental quantities defining the properties of molecules. A new study by a research team from Germany, Canada, Poland, and Lebanon offers a detailed understanding on how changes in spin states affect the nuclear configuration as a probe of the change in electron distribution by directly observing the atomic motions and changes in the molecular structure, driven by change in electron spin. more

Efficient new electron diffraction method for fragile protein crystals more

Team develops new crystallography method which dramatically simplifies starting enzymatic reactions by mixing a cocktail of small amounts of liquids with protein crystals. Determination of the protein structures at different times after mixing can be assembled into a time-lapse sequence. more