Low-power protein crystallography using polycapillary optics

This paper describes the design and performance of a low power protein crystallography system using polycapillary optics. The characterizations of the source and polycapillary optics are presented. Three optic types: collimating, slightly focusing and strongly focusing optics have been used in low power source-optic combination systems. The source-collimating optic and source-slightly focusing, optic systems were used to collect data sets for chicken egg-white Lysozyme with conventional sample oscillation during data collection. The data sets show high quality by analysis with a conventional software package, DENZO. Still diffraction patterns without oscillation have also been obtained by a low power source-strongly focusing optic combination. These patterns have been analyzed by developing software for processing diffraction patterns obtained with strongly convergent X-ray beams. The directions of future work and system improvements are also discussed.