25th Heart of Europe Bio-Crystallography meeting

The 25th Heart of Europe Bio-Crystallography meeting (HEC25) took place in September 2023 in Salem, located in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Germany. The attendees were able to appreciate the beautiful scenery of Lake Kummerow. The meeting was organized by Professor Michael Lammers' group from Greifswald University. As previously, the organization of HEC was supported by 11 sponsors including IUCr Journals.

The meeting was attended by 113 structural biologists from 23 research groups in central Europe (Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany and Poland), and opened with the introduction of two new HEC groups, the group led by Ingrid Span (FAU, Erlangen-Nurnberg) and that by Johanna Hakanpää (PETRA III, DESY, Hamburg).

Over the course of three days, 27 PhD students and postdocs presented current topics of their research. Several prizes were awarded for outstanding short talks and flash talks, made possible by generous support from the IUCr, Gesellschaft für Biochemie und Molekularbiologie e.V. (GBM) and Structure/Cell Press. As typical for HEC presentations, the quality of the talks was remarkable, making it hard for the HEC Prize Committee to reach its decision. Three PhD students — Stephanie Himpich from Markus Wahl's group, Stefan Djukic from Pavlina Rezacova's group, and Paweł Kochanowski from Przemysław Grudnik's group — received awards from Structure/Cell Press.

The best flash-talk prizes were awarded to Evangelia Nathanail from Oliver Daumke's group (GBM prize) and Chen-Chiao Yang from Norbert Sträter's group (IUCr prize), presented by Michael Lammers. Dominik Rafalski from Matthias Bochtler's group was awarded the PostDoc prize for the best short-talk (IUCr prize).

The recipients were acknowledged for their well-organized presentations, exceptional clarity in explaining their research and the significant impact of their projects. These projects covered a diverse range of topics, including phage defense systems (S. Himpich), purine nucleoside hydrolase inhibitors (S. Djukic), the DHS-ERK2 complex (P. Kochanowski), the MICOS complex involved in mitochondrial integrity and form (E. Nathanail), crystallographic fragment screening with amino acid derivatives (C.-C. Yang) and CRISPR-associated proteins Csx15 and Csx20 (D. Rafalski), demonstrating the remarkable talent within the crystallography and cryo-EM communities.

The HEC lecture, presented each year by a prominent scientist outside the HEC community, was delivered by Alfred Wittinghofer (MPI of Molecular Physiology/Dortmund). His talk “Nature uses Phosphates” was a summary and celebration of his entire scientific career, highlighting the contributions of structural research to the study of enzymes utilizing phosphates.