Mid-Atlantic Protein Workshop

The 1994 Mid-Atlantic Protein Crystallography Workshop at Duke University, North Carolina was organized by S. White and L. Beese (Duke) and S. Jordan (Glaxo, Inc.). S. Burley (Rockefeller U.) opened the session on "Nucleic Acid Binding Proteins" with a  lecture entitled "X-ray crystallographic studies of eukaryotic transcription factors". C. Davies (Duke), G. Arents (Johns Hopkins), and T. S. Krishna (Rockefeller) discussed their results on the ribosomal protein L9, the histone octamer, and the DNA polymerase clamp protein, respectively.

In Session II, "Technology Update", E. Westbrook (Argonne National Laboratory) presented a lecture entitled "Latest Results from CCD Detectors, Brookhaven National Laboratory and the APS". The other speakers in this session were A. Howard (Molecular Simulations, Inc.), G. Williams (Enraf Nonius), J. Phillips (Siemens Analytical Instruments) and B. Santarsiero (Molecular Structure Corporation).

Session III, "Enzyme Complexes", included presentations by I. Kourinov (Thomas Jefferson), F. Luo and Y. Zhao (UNC), B. Lovejoy (Glaxo Inc.), and S. Sprang (UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas). They discussed their structural investigations of trypsin, CyPA, collagenase, and Gi(a1):GTP(g)S, respectively.

Session IV, "Molecular Design and Analysis", was chaired by H. Hellinga (Duke). The first speaker was J. Richardson (Duke) with a presentation on protein design. This was followed by presentations of L. Zhang (UNC), J. K. M. Rao (NCI-FCRDC), A. Zdanov (NCI-FCRDC), D. Eggleston (SmithKline Beecham), and R. Harrison (Thomas Jefferson). They spoke on the alpha helix vs 3-10 helix, unusual folding patterns in proteins, modeling of IL-4 with its receptors, use of centrosymmetric crystals, and design of serine protease inhibitors, respectively. A poster session and Carolina BBQ completed the day's activities.

The final session, "Enzyme Structure and Mechanism", was moderated by H. Ke (UNC). The speakers included I. Weber (DuPont Merck, Thomas Jefferson), D. Mayrose (UNC), X. Ji (CARB), and J. Lukowski, A. Swain, and G. Bujacz (all of NCI-FCRDC). The presentations included studies of retroviral proteases, proline isomerase, glutathione S-transferase, Pseudomonas 7A glutaminase-asparaginase, Acinetobacter glutaminasificans glutaminase-asparaginase, and monellin.

The meeting was sponsored by North Carolina Biotechnology Center, Glaxo, Molecular Simulations, Du Pont Merck, Burroughs Wellcome Company, Molecular Structure Corporation, Enraf Nonius Company, Siemens Analytical X-ray, SmithKline Beecham, Hampton Research, Silicon Graphics, and Protein Solutions, Inc.