Pump-Probe Time-Resolved Serial Femtosecond Crystallography at SACLA: Current Status and Data Collection Strategies

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The review by Nango et al. describes Pump-probe time-resolved serial femtosecond crystallography at SACLA.
It is very well written and documented and, in my opinion, it covers an important topic. For this reason, I'd support it for publication in Applied Science with only minor revisions to be implemented.

Abstract:
The author write that "In the pump-probe method, photosensitive protein microcrystals are continuously delivered from an injector ". They should clarify that, although being the most common, this is not the only possible kind of pump-probe experiments. There are other possible pumps, such as chemicals (with in-jet mixing), electric or magnetic fields, for example.

Pump-probe Time-resolved SFX Experiments
The authors should provide more details about the pump-probe delay. In particualr, what is the accessible pump-probe delay range? How accurate is the measurement of this delay?
How does the delay range change for the different sample injection schemes?

Could the authors provide the average hit-rate obtained at SACLA? Of course it depends on the crystal concentration, but nevertheless it'd be good to give the reader an idea of how many pulses typically hit a crystal with the given setup, or, in other words, about how many patterns can be collected in a given time.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript provided a comprehensive review also update on the development of pump-probe TR-SFX using XFEL produced at SACLA in a compact form. Its content is interesting to readers in related fields. 

Acceptance is recommended.

Author Response

Thank you for reviewing our manuscript.

We have carefully checked and touched up the manuscript. In addition, the revised manuscript was proofread by native speakers.