Structural information from the interference effect of electron-capture X-rays

We observed the interference effect of electron-capture X-rays emitted by the nuclear transformations in radioisotopes. This interference is between the direct monochromatic emission from the radioactive atoms and the emission totally reflected by the substrate surface. Nanometer-level structural information about the radioactive atoms can be obtained by analyzing the measured interference fringes because the period of these fringes depends on the position of the radioactive atoms relative to the substrate surface. In this work, we used the functional protein molecules (myosin subfragment 1(S1)) which were radioiodinated with no carrier added ¹²⁵I to observe the conformational changes in aqueous solutions.