Elastic strain analysis Credit: POSTECH
by Pohang University of Science & Technology
It is millions of trillions of times brighter than sunlight and a whopping 1,000 trillionth of a second, appropriately called ‘instantaneous light’—the X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) light that opens a new scientific paradigm. Combining it with AI, an international research team has succeeded in filming and restoring the 3-D structure of nanoparticles that share structural similarities with viruses. With the fear of a new pandemic growing around the world due to COVID-19, this discovery is attracting attention among academic circles for imaging the structure of the virus with both high accuracy and speed.
An international team of researchers from POSTECH, National University of Singapore (NUS), KAIST, GIST, and IBS have successfully analyzed the structural heterogeneities in 3-D structures of nanoparticles by irradiating thousands of nanoparticles per hour using the XFEL at Pohang Accelerator Laboratory (PAL) in Korea and restoring 3-D multi-models through machine learning. The research team led by Professor Changyong Song and Ph.D. candidate Do Hyung Cho of Department of Physics at POSTECH has driven the international research collaboration to realize it.
Continue reading… “Filming a 3-D video of a virus with ‘instantaneous light’ and AI”