X-ray micro-diffraction studies on biological samples at the BioCAT Beamline 18-ID at the Advanced Photon Source

Advances in synchrotron beamlines bring opportunities with accompanying challenges for the study of soft condensed (biological) matter. This article describes improvements to the BioCAT beamline that include micro-focus, scanning and cryo-cooling of soft connective tissues yielding X-ray data from whole rat-tail tendons to better than 4 Å.