Joint Workshop
Title:
Crystallography Made Easy through Automation: Bringing structural determination to the general biology community
Description:
Recent advances in experimental automation have brought macromolecular structure determination closer to the non-experts in the field. This workshop will introduce the participants to what structural information crystallography can provide, the basics of crystallographic techniques (protein crystallization, x-ray diffraction data collection, and data analysis) and then demonstrate how these steps may be simplified by taking advantage of the automated facilities available at Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) and the Hauptman Woodward Institute. In particular, HWI offers services for high-throughput crystallization condition screening and optimization and automated facilities at SSRL enable experimenters to remotely collect x-ray diffraction data for crystal quality analysis and structure determination using an internet connection at their home laboratory. SSRL also provides remote access to software and computing resources necessary for complete structure determination. Participants will get hands-on experience with some of the automation techniques used at SSRL and learn how to prepare crystalline samples for remote data collection.
Anyone in the general biology community who is interested in learning about how to make use of the technique of macromolecular crystallography enabled by automated technology developments is invited to attend.
A similar workshop was held last year at the University of Melbourne Australia. A description of the proceedings along with comments from participants is available at this website: http://mmsn.net.au/assets/images/events/SSRL_Feb_2007/SSRL07_ws_Oz_report_PT.pdf
Organizers:
- Guillermo Calero (Department of Structural Biology, University of Pittsburgh)
- Joanne Yeh (Department of Structural Biology, University of Pittsburgh)
- Edward Snell (Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute)
- Irimpan Mathews (Structural Molecular Biology, SSRL)
- Aina Cohen (Structural Molecular Biology, SSRL)