Fiber diffraction

Overview
Fiber diffraction is a scattering technique in which molecular structure is determined from scattering data (usually of X-rays or electrons) from filaments composed of a regular array of molecules distinguished by a single direction (the fiber axis). The resulting diffraction patterns show layer lines, each with Bessel function intensities.

Historical role
Fiber diffraction data led to several important advances in the development of structural biology, e.g., the original models of the α-helix and the Watson-Crick model of double-stranded DNA.