Identifying atomic structure via diffraction

For the past decades, the method of choice for the determination of atomic structure in structural biology and nanoscience has been X-ray diffraction. This exploits the spectacular Bragg/Von Laue phenomenon that plane waves scattered at crystals yield discrete diffraction patterns. The catch is that a native assembly of proteins has to be broken and the protein needs to be crystallized, which is difficult and may lead to non-native forms. In my talk I discuss alternatives such as fiber diffraction which avoid crystallization at the expense of lower resolution in angular direction (Cochran, Crick, Vand 1952), and a recent theoretical advance which proposes incoming waveforms which exhibit fully discrete diffraction patterns when scattered at helices (Friesecke, James, Juestel, arXiv 1506.04240, 2015).