Coherent X-ray diffraction imaging of bacteria

Coherent X-ray diffraction imaging is one of a number of recently developed lens-less microscopic techniques giving 2D real space structure when combined with phase retrieval data processing. A team in Shandong University in China has recently published an interesting observation of intact unstained magnetotactic bacteria. It was confirmed that the reconstructed images give some intercellular structures, such as nucleoid, polyβ-hydroxybutyrate granules, and magnetosomes, which have been identified by electron microscopy. The team was also successful in quantification of the density, i.e., it was found that the average density of magnetotactic bacteria is 1.19 g/cm³ from their data. The experiment was done with 5 keV X-ray photons at BL29XU, SPring-8, Japan. For more information, see the paper, "Quantitative Imaging of Single Unstained Magnetotactic Bacteria by Coherent X.ray Diffraction Microscopy", Jiadong Fan et al., Anal. Chem. 87, 5849 (2015).