The Division of Structural Biology, as one of the largest structural biology laboratories in Europe, plays a significant role in coordinating European efforts in structural biology. The Division has a five-member team dedicated to working with the senior academics in the Division to foster international collaboration and help to realize the goal of integrated large-scale structural biology resources across Europe to allow world-leading research. An overview of the main projects is given below and full details about each project can be found on the relevant web sites.
STRUBI is coordinating Instruct - Integrating Biology. This project seeks to provide stable funding and open access for large-scale research facilities and resources across Europe. Initially funded under the FP7 programme with a budget of €4.5M, Instruct entered its operational phase in April 2011.
SPINE2-Complexes is an Integrated Project funded under the FP6 programme with a total budget of €12M to determine the 3D structures of biologically important protein complexes. The project is a follow-on to SPINE (see below) and is coordinated from STRUBI.
SPINE, short for Structural Proteomics in Europe, was the first FP5 programme to develop technologies for high-throughput structural proteomics studies of biologically important proteins. The project ran from 2002 to 2006 and was coordinated by STRUBI with a budget of €13.7M. A special issue of Acta Crystallographica Section D (number 62, volume 10) provided a summary of the achievements of SPINE.
Teach-SG aims to build on the successes of SPINE and other FP6 structural genomics projects to provide a platform for training young scientists, scientists from smaller laboratories and scientists from new EU member states in state-of-the-art technologies developed in in structural genomics. It supports an ambitious programme of workshops and meetings giving hands-on technical training in high-throughput cloning, protein expression, characterization, structure determination and bioinformatics data handling. Teach-SG, coordinated by STRUBI, provides training opportunities in collaboration with SPINE2-Complexes.
P-cube, is the acronym for Protein Production Platforms and is a recently funded FP7 Integrated Infrastructure Initiative with the aim of enabling access to specialist protein production and crystallization facilities by researchers across Europe. The project is coordinated from the University of Zürich and STRUBI/OPPF offers mammalian and bacterial expression facilties as well as access to crystallization robots. STRUBI also hosts the P-cube web site.
