title: Strategies for processing diffraction data from randomly oriented particles.
abstract: The high intensity of free-electron X-ray light sources may enable structure determinations of viruses or even individual proteins without the encumbrance of first forming crystals. This note compares two schemes of non-crystalline diffraction data collection that have been proposed: serial single-shot data from individual particles, and averaged cross-correlation data from particle ensembles. The information content of these schemes is easily compared and we show that the single-shot approach, although experimentally more challenging, is always superior in this respect. In fact, for 3D structure determination a constraint counting argument shows that the cross-correlation scheme suffers from data deficiency.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853-2501, USA. ve10@cornell.edu
authors.forename: Veit
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Elser
mesh_terms: D016208:Databases, Factual; D004583:Electrons; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008968:Molecular Conformation; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry; D014961:X-Ray Diffraction
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins