Partners:

http://www.ec-fesp.org

*Funded by the EC as a SSA (specific support action)

FESPForum for European Structural

Proteomics

Lucia BanciLucia BanciCERM,Italy

Wolfgang BaumeisterWolfgang BaumeisterMPI,Germany

Udo HeinemannUdo HeinemannMDC,Germany

Gunter SchneiderGunter SchneiderKarolinska Institute,Sweden

Israel SilmanIsrael SilmanWeizmann Institute,Israel

Joel L. Sussman,Joel L. Sussman, CoordinatorWeizmann Institute,Israel

FESP Forum for European Structural

Proteomics“A policy-oriented forum for European structural genomics to assess infrastructures and set a strategic research agenda.”

• Assess Infrastructures with respect to the needs for Structural Genomics/Proteomics in Europe and the rest of the world• Develop strategic plans for an European policy in Structural Genomics/ Proteomics

What do we plan?• Assess Structural Genomics/Proteomics projects

a position paper on assessment and a strategic roadmap for future directions

FESP Survey on the needs of users of NMR RI

How important is access to NMR facilities for your research ?Essential

Important

Is access to NMR infrastructures enough for your present needs ?No

Yes

Not Important

Comments on NMR from 136 users(including a few X-ray people) out of a total of 350

Percentage of peer-reviewed publications relying on access to BioNMR infrastructures

How will your needs for access to BioNMR infrastructures change during the next 3 years?

> 50%

From 21 to 50%

< 20%

Not sure

Remain at the same level

Decrease

Increase

NMR days at BioNMR infrastructures used per year in the last 3 years

From 0 to 20 days> 80 days

From 21 to 80 days

Which use of BioNMR infrastructures will you do in the next 3 years?

• Protein structure: 78 answers• Protein-protein interactions: 69 answers• Protein-ligand interactions: 67 answers• Protein-nucleic acid interactions: 29 answers• DNA/RNA structure: 14 answers• Drug screening: 23 answers• Other: 27 answers

Significance of the training and education of users

•Support to users by NMR scientists

•Courses

Important

Essential

Not ImportantEssential

Important

Expectations of the BioNMR Community

Technological developments

Higher and higher sensitivity instruments

More development for larger and larger systems

More access to solid-state (and fast spinning) NMR

100 kDa at least !

Cryoprobes and hopefully DNP !

Expectations of the BioNMR Community

Role of BioNMR RI in the scientific community

NMR infrastructures are important not only for giving access to high fields but: should play a role in “increasing the knowledge of NMR users relative to

the new frontiers experiments in the field of structural biology”

should develop new approaches and technologies necessary to solve scientific problems

NMR infrastructures are essential for researchers coming from less favored countries where no high field NMR spectrometers nor the necessary expertise are available

NMR infrastructures need to standardize and harmonize the various operations (experiments, software etc…) like the crystallographers did.

Expectations of the BioNMR Community

Role of BioNMR in the scientific community

Training courses and meetings need to be organized on a regular basis to spread good practice, reinforce interactions among European scientists and develop collaborations “Therefore, funding and development actions of these BioNMR infrastructures not only assist researchers to their activities but also provide them the opportunity to transfer knowledge and experience to their home countries”

Travel should be limited as much as possible: remote access and access to the closest Research Infrastructure independently of its national location

BioNMR Infrastructures should act as catalysts of NMR technological andmethodological developments

It was clear that support for synchrotron and NMR facilities on a Europe-wide level is vital for maintaining the competitiveness of the European structural biology community.

… cutting-edge studies required the use of complementary methods in order to go forward. Thus, much effort needs to be invested in interfacing between the various SB/SP techniques.

Fostering the interaction of structural biologists with other biologists is thus crucial, and making their data readily accessible to these other biologists is a key issue that must be seriously addressed.

Do we have a dream?

This challenge requires the coordination of a number of tools and techniques which provide information at different resolution and

the filling of gaps between them, in the context of Systems Biology

Integration of structural knowledge at the molecular level, with functional knowledge and the network of interactions

(interactome) within the environment of the cell

From the genome to cellular processes and their regulation

We want to see biomolecules & complexes dancing in the cell

In this frame BioNMR can have a major role

Google CELL*

*Hartmut Oschkinat, FESP Workshop, Skåvsjöholm, 13-15 Nov 2006

Top quality science requires

long-term support to

infrastructures