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Annual Reports to the IUCr Executive Committee

The IUCr Newsletter (ISSN 1067-0696; coden IUC-NEB) is published quarterly (4x) by the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr Executive Secretary e-mail execsec@iucr.org). Members receive the IUCr Newsletter by virtue of country membership in the IUCr. Periodical postage rates paid at Buffalo, NY and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Please send changes of address to IUCr Newsletter Editorial Office, c/o Hauptmann-Woodward Medical Research Institute, 700 Ellicott St. Buffalo, NY 14203 USA.

2017 Annual Meeting of the Crystallographic Society of Japan

Volume 26, Number 1, 2018

ISSN 1067-0696

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Latest articles

10 Aug 2018
Sine Larsen awarded Tenth Max Perutz Prize of the ECA
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10 Aug 2018
Two structural biology special issues in IUCr Journals
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Two structural biology special issues in IUCr Journals

This August IUCr Journals have published two special issues on structural biology.

Edited by Paul Langan, the August 2018 issue of Acta Cryst. D gives a flavour of the research reported at the 5th International Symposium on Diffraction Structural Biology (ISDSB) held in Knoxville, TN, USA. This meeting brought together researchers from academic and industrial backgrounds and covered X-ray, neutron and electron diffraction, together with complementary techniques such as small-angle scattering, NMR spectroscopy, electron microscopy and advanced computational approaches.

Articles in the issue report recent structural results and describe developments in biological small-angle neutron scattering, X-ray solution scattering and the story of how neutron cryo-crystallography is becoming increasingly popular. The highlights of the first five years of the high-intensity, quasi-Laue neutron crystallography beamline IMAGINE are also reviewed. Finally, there is a discussion of the models determined by neutron diffraction, and improvements to their validation and deposition are proposed.

The August 2018 issue of Acta Cryst. F is dedicated to the crystallography of glycoproteins and protein-carbohydrate complexes. Edited by Jon Agirre and Mark van Raaij, this special issue also has a mix of structural information and cutting-edge methodology. It includes topical reviews on structural and mechanistic aspects of protein O-fucosylation, and on using NMR spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography to elucidate protein–glycan interactions in a complementary way.

Our knowledge of the structure of carbohydrates, but especially of their function as post- and co-translational modifications, is now increasing exponentially after perhaps lagging behind that of protein and nucleic aids. However, there is still some work to do on methodology and this issue presents a number of developments in this area. The issue also reports some recent structures. These include the highly glycosylated human leukocyte elastase in complex with an inhibitor, several enzymes that act on carbohydrates and finally a transcriptional regulator bound to a glycan effector.

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03 Aug 2018
25th Slovenian-Croatian Crystallographic Meeting
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25th Slovenian-Croatian Crystallographic Meeting

Plenary lecturers (l-r): H. Puschmann, J.K. Cockcroft, E. Boldyreva, D. Stalke and K. Molčanov (missing M. Marinšek).

The 25th Slovenian-Croatian Crystallographic Meeting was held in June 2017 in the city of Ljubljana, Slovenia, in the newly built Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology. There were 79 registered participants from Austria, Germany, India, Russian Federation, South Africa, UK, Croatia and Slovenia. Five plenary lectures were presented: 'High-pressure studies of organic and coordination compounds' (Elena Boldyreva, Novosibirsk, Russia), 'More than 100 years of Lewis diagrams - still valid in the light of charge density?' (Dietmar Stalke, Göttingen, Germany), 'Powder diffraction: an essential complementary tool for those skilled in the art but one with pitfalls for the unwary' (Jeremy Karl Cockcroft, London, UK), 'Stacking of planar conjugated rings - beyond aromatics' (Krešimir Molčanov, Zagreb, Croatia) and 'Microstructure evolution in cermet anodes for solid oxide fuel cells' (Marjan Marinšek, Ljubljana, Slovenia). To enrich the programme of the meeting, an Olex2 workshop was also organized (Horst Puschmann, OlexSys and Durham University, UK).

One of the advantages of the Slovenian-Croatian Meetings is that all participants give an oral presentation, which gives young scientists the opportunity to present their work in a friendly but professional atmosphere. 59 short oral presentations addressed contemporary topics in crystallography: structure determination of organic, inorganic and coordination compounds; crystal architecture and design; phase transitions; solid solutions; structure-property relationships; synergy of diffraction and complementary techniques; and history.

The meeting was organized jointly by the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology, University of Ljubljana, and the Croatian Crystallographic Association under the auspices of the University of Ljubljana, and promoted by the Slovenian Chemical Society. There was no registration fee. Therefore we thank the sponsors, donors and advertisers: European Crystallographic Association, Renacon, Rigaku, Bruker, MiTeGen, Crystal Impact, Stoe, Dectris, Mettler Toledo, Aparatura, Lek-Sandoz, Laboratorij-um and Scan.

More information about the meeting can be found here.

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03 Aug 2018
Richard Henderson receives royal recognition
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03 Aug 2018
Rick Millane elected as Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi
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Rick Millane elected as Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi

Rick Millane. Photo courtesy of U. of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.

Former Acta Crystallographica Section A co-editor Rick Millane (University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand) has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi. The fellowship recognises true international distinction in research and scholarship for advancing science, technology and the humanities. Professor Millane’s theoretical and computational methods for imaging biological molecules and tissue using X-rays and optical radiation allow their structures to be determined, which is key to understanding disease, for drug design and for non-invasive medical imaging.

In 2017, Professor Millane was one of an international team of researchers awarded a NZ$2 million research grant by the Human Frontier Science Program (to develop a novel method for imaging individual biomolecules with atomic resolution).

In late 2016, he was awarded the T. K. Sidey Medal from the Royal Society Te Apārangi for his contributions to methods for imaging biological molecules. In 2012, he became the first New Zealander to be named a Fellow of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, for his achievements in diffraction and reconstruction algorithms for biophysical imaging.

Professor Millane is well known internationally for his work on 'phase-retrieval' methods, an important component of X-ray diffraction imaging, publishing his first papers in this area in the early 1990s. His phase-retrieval algorithms have been applied to the latest imaging technology: X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs), which use X-ray pulses short enough and intense enough to image biomolecules that have defied conventional imaging methods, and use nano-scale crystals with just a few unit cells in each direction. This technology has the potential to greatly advance understanding of disease processes and drug design. He is acknowledged as a leader in advancing algorithms that are suitable for this new technology. He was also awarded a prestigious James Cook Research Fellowship in 2012 from the Royal Society of New Zealand to work on this topic.

Professor Millane has also worked on fibre diffraction analysis for imaging and determining the structures of disordered or non-crystalline substances, including biopolymers such as DNA and sugars in connective tissue. His work on optical diffusion imaging has contributed to a new non-invasive medical imaging technique.

Professor Millane has published widely in IUCr Journals. You can see a full list of papers here.

Breaking news

Professor Millane has been announced as the recipient of the University of Canterbury's Research Medal 2018, one of the highest awards the University’s Council can bestow. “Professor Millane is recognised as an outstanding researcher, educator and educational leader. His skills are diverse and his work is interdisciplinary,” said Deputy Vice-Chancellor | Tumu Tuarua and chair of the Selection Committee, Ian Wright. The 2018 medal will be officially presented to Professor Millane by the UC Chancellor | Te Kumu Kaunihera, John Wood, later this year at the Chancellor’s Dinner.

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03 Aug 2018
IUCr Executive Committee member honoured
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03 Aug 2018
Ted Janssen (1936-2017)
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Ted Janssen (1936-2017)

Theo Willem Jan Marie (Ted) Janssen passed away on 29 September 2017 in Groesbeek. He was born on 13 August 1936 in Vught, near 's-Hertogenbosch. Together with Pim de Wolff and Aloysio Janner he was one of the founding fathers of N-dimensional crystallography, more specifically of the superspace approach, in which structures with sharp diffraction peaks but lacking three-dimensional lattice periodicity are indexed using N > 3 indices.

After studying theoretical physics in Utrecht, graduating under Leon van Hove, he met Aloysio Janner in 1965 and became his first PhD student at the Radboud University in Nijmegen (then still called the Catholic University Nijmegen). He finished his PhD thesis, Crystallographic Groups in Space and Time, in 1968, thereby providing the theoretical basis of what would become the superspace approach. In 1972, he was appointed as an Associate Professor in Nijmegen and became promoted to full Professor of Theoretical Physics in 1995.

Ted's PhD thesis already showed his deep understanding of the mathematics underlying the symmetry analysis of physical structures. For example, he applied abstract cohomology theory to describe space groups as group extensions of the translation subgroup by the point group and it is not surprising that (besides acknowledging, for example, the support of Edgar Ascher) Ted thanks several mathematicians for helpful discussions. This clearly illustrated Ted's truly interdisciplinary scientific position, interacting with physicists as easily as with mathematicians and materials scientists.

At the IUCr Congress in Kyoto in 1972, Ted and Aloysio Janner met Pim de Wolff from the Delft University of Technology, who presented his work on incommensurately modulated crystals, which he proposed to describe in a four-dimensional space. They recognized that the corresponding four-dimensional symmetry groups were precisely the same as the space-time groups occurring in their own work, and from then on the three joined forces to generalize the superspace approach to other aperiodic structures such as composite structures and quasicrystals (which were discovered in 1982). The groundbreaking importance of the superspace approach was acknowledged by the award of the Aminoff Prize of the Swedish Academy of Science to Ted, Pim de Wolff and Aloysio Janner in 1988 and the Ewald Prize of the IUCr to Ted and Aloysio in 2014. Their contributions were also explicitly mentioned when the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded to Dan Shechtman in 2011 for the discovery and description of quasicrystals.

From Ted's appointment as a staff member in Nijmegen in 1972 onwards, he and Aloysio created a strong group in solid-state physics, including experimentalists but also reaching far into the mathematics department. The interdisciplinarity of the group corresponded to the impressively broad range of research topics to which Ted made substantial contributions. On the one hand are his famous publications on the mathematical description of quasicrystals, on the other hand one finds his work in collaboration with experimentalists, looking at vibrational modes of phonons, phason modes (in relation to sliding modes and frictionless motion) and the analysis of phase transitions in aperiodic structures (with original publications as late as 2011).

Ted's research articles show an extraordinary combination of clear style and precision. Listening to his scientific talks was always a pleasure and his eagerness to share his knowledge made him an inspiring lecturer, giving well received courses on a broad range of topics including quantum mechanics, chaos theory, mathematical physics and group theory. Some of his excellent syllabi were adopted by his fellow lecturers and have even been in use at Radboud University long after Ted's retirement. His monograph Crystallographic Groups is still one of the best resources on this topic, both covering the mathematical background with the required precision and demonstrating its application to real physical phenomena.

Ted served the scientific community in various roles, including as an editor (he was a Co-editor for Acta Crystallographica Section A from 1993 to 2002), as a reviewer and as Chair of IUCr ad hoc Commissions on Nomenclature. In 1996, he submitted a proposal for a Volume A2 of International Tables for Crystallography, devoted to N-dimensional crystallography. Although this volume was never realized, the content of the proposal is remarkable, as it suggested a computer-based approach, generating the requested information by a collection of algorithms from a database of stored information. The ideas in this proposal have since been realized in the Bilbao Crystallographic Server.

During the restructuring of the Faculty of Science at Radboud University, Ted played an active role in setting up a group on Theoretical Condensed Matter within the newly founded Institute for Molecules and Materials (IMM). Even after his retirement, he was frequently present at the Institute's seminars, and was always ready to help with scientific questions or requests and happily gave talks himself.

Besides his scientific interests, Ted was very interested in the arts, enjoying literature, the visual arts and especially music. Throughout his life he took great pleasure in playing the piano, harpsichord and cello.

We have lost a great colleague and we will honour his memory if we keep our scientific interests as broad, multi-layered and interdisciplinary as Ted's were.

The text of this article was originally published in Acta Cryst. (2018), A74, 403-404.

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03 Aug 2018
Yukiteru Katsube (1930-2016)
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Yukiteru Katsube (1930-2016)

Yukiteru Katsube. Photo courtesy of the Journal of the Crystallographic Society of Japan.

Yukiteru Katsube, Professor Emeritus at Osaka University, Japan, died on 1 April 2016 in Osaka at the age of 85. He was a leader in protein crystallography in Japan.

Professor Katsube was born in Yonago, Japan, on 3 November 1930. He graduated from Himeji Institute of Technology, Japan, in 1953, and worked as a Research Associate there until 1957, when he entered the Graduate School of Engineering of Osaka University. He was an Associate Professor of Himeji Institute of Technology (1959-1966) and Tottori University, Japan (1966-1971), and a Professor of Tottori University (1971-1983). He joined the Institute for Protein Research (IPR) of Osaka University in 1983, and served as Director of the Institute from 1988 to 1992.

He initiated crystal structure analysis of a tetrapeptide, glycyl-L-prolyl-L-leucyl-glycine, by the vector-seeking method. In 1967, he successfully determined its structure by the heavy-atom method [Ueki et al. (1967). Nature 216, 1205].

He led the crystallographic group in Tottori University, where he determined a series of metabolite structures of Aspergillus, with the goal of understanding metabolic pathways. He successfully applied the anomalous dispersion effect of oxygen atoms to determine their absolute configurations, which are key to determining their metabolic pathway.

His first achievement in protein crystallography was solving the structure of algal [2Fe-2S] ferredoxin [Fukuyama et al. (1980). Nature 286, 522]. In addition, he determined a novel structure of bacterial [4Fe-4S] ferredoxin by the native anomalous dispersion method using Cu Kα rays [Fukuyama et al. (1988). J. Mol. Biol. 199, 183], thus making an important contribution to research on the molecular evolution of iron-sulfur proteins.

As the leader of protein crystallography at IPR from 1983 onward, he introduced molecular biology technology to protein crystallography to elucidate the structure-function relationships of proteins. He collaborated with biologists in various fields and determined many protein structures, e.g. xylanase, cyclodextrin glucanotransferase, 1,6-glucosidase, β-amylase, 3-isopropylmalate dehydrogenase, hydroxylamine oxidoreductase, Cu/Zn-superoxide dismutase, Mn-superoxide dismutase, tryptophanase, glutathione synthetase and basic fibroblast growth factor. He introduced many biochemists to structural biology, and trained many young structural biologists who continue to be active in research today.

He served on the Editorial Advisory Board of Acta Crystallographica Section D and the advisory board of the BNL Protein Data Bank.

After retiring in March 1993, he made every effort to spread protein crystallography to private companies. He was the Senior Advisor to the President of Rigaku Corporation (1996-2003), the Chairman of PharmaAxess Inc. (2003-2015) and the President of Protein Mall Kansai (2009-2015). Despite his declining lung function over the past few years, Professor Katsube eagerly performed these duties. After many long years of productive contributions to science, his life has come to an end. May his soul rest in peace.

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The IUCr Newsletter (ISSN 1067-0696; coden IUC-NEB) is published electronically by the International Union of Crystallography. Feature articles, meeting announcements and reports, information on research or other items of potential interest to crystallographers may be submitted to the Editors at any time. Items will be selected for publication on the basis of suitability, content, style, timeliness and appeal.

IUCr Newsletter

IUCr Newsletter

2017 Annual Meeting of the Crystallographic Society of Japan

Latest articles

Sine Larsen awarded Tenth Max Perutz Prize of the ECA

Sine Larsen awarded Tenth Max Perutz Prize of the ECA

Two structural biology special issues in IUCr Journals

Two structural biology special issues in IUCr Journals

25th Slovenian-Croatian Crystallographic Meeting

25th Slovenian-Croatian Crystallographic Meeting

Richard Henderson receives royal recognition

Richard Henderson receives royal recognition

Rick Millane elected as Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi

Rick Millane elected as Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi

Breaking news

IUCr Executive Committee member honoured

IUCr Executive Committee member honoured

Additional reading

Griffith University News

ABC National (featured on News breakfast, national news and online)

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Australian Associated Press

Sydney Morning Herald

Australian Academy of Science

Ted Janssen (1936-2017)

Ted Janssen (1936-2017)

Yukiteru Katsube (1930-2016)

Yukiteru Katsube (1930-2016)

newsletter design: Michele Zema, Andrea Sharpe, Peter Strickland, Brian McMahon; newsletter logo design: Michele Zema