Biological materials can be studied using x-ray scattering thanks to advances in synchrotron radiation (SR) sources and instrumentation. Michel Koch at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Hamburg, Germany, outlines the importance of SR x-ray scattering and related imaging techniques in the life sciences. This non-destructive method for studying non-crystalline matter at scales of a few angstroms to a few hundred nanometres has applications in structural molecular biology, protein and nucleic acid folding, structural studies of lipid assemblies and the study of hierarchical materials like wood and bone.