2018 was an exciting year in science. So many great stories. However, if I had to pick my favorite science news story of the year, I would pick two related studies. Both studies have to do with a new kind of method for molecular structure determination. Traditionally, the 3 dimensional structure of molecules has been determined by x-ray crystallography or NMR. Both of these techniques require large amounts of sample to run the experiments. However, two independent studies were published this year where a new approach has been used which requires very little starting sample. The new technique involves hitting the sample with an electron beam and determining the structure from its diffraction pattern. This technique has been used before to determine the structure of membrane bound proteins, but in the recent studies it was used to determine the structures of small organic molecules. One reason that this is important is because with natural products there is often a limited amount of sample available, and there are many good drugs that come from Mother Nature. If we have a way to determine the structures of these compounds, then this should help accelerate drug discovery from this class of compounds. I like these studies because they are useful, elegant, and because the information was made freely accessible to the public. You can find the publication by the American group here, and the publication by the European group here.