Partners: *Funded by the EC as a SSA (specific support action) FESP Forum for European Structural Proteomics Lucia Banci CERM,Italy Wolfgang Baumeister MPI,Germany Udo Heinemann MDC,Germany Gunter Schneider Karolinska Institute,Sweden Israel Silman Weizmann Institute,Israel Joel L. Sussman, Joel L. Sussman, Coordinator Weizmann 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 Important Essential 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 and methodological 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, Nov 2006

Top quality science requires long-term support to infrastructures