A workshop (WK.02) at the ACA meeting

This one-day workshop will focus on computational approaches to structural modelling and analysis. In the first session, a brief reprise of fundamental concepts will be provided, with a focus on pitfalls in data acquisition and reduction that can affect subsequent data analysis and modelling. The remainder of the day will be allocated to the hand-on application of the leading software packages to the analysis of solution scatter. This workshop will feature direct participation from the creators of the most prevalent software packages currently used (including BioSAXS(EMBL), SIBYLS, CCP-SAS, FoXs and IMP). The participating groups will present their software, including the basis for the algorithms employed, and further deliver guided hands-on tutorials for workshop participants. This approach will introduce and train participants on the appropriate application of these tools, including experimental design, model preparation, comparison of structural models using both SAS and complementary information, validation, and most importantly the limitations of interpretation with regards to the biological conclusions that can be made.

The workshop format will include lectures, and a selection of hands-on practical exercises. Students will be expected to bring laptops with appropriate pre-installed software as necessary. Prior to the workshop, a website will be made available containing installation instructions and
software for each tutorial.

The Seventh edition is to be held at the Institute Química-Física Rocasolano- CSIC

Invited speakers and tutors:

Paul Adams, Berkeley, USA
Pavel Afonine, Berkeley, USA
Armando Albert, Madrid, Spain
Kay Diederichs, Konstanz, Germany
Paul Emsley, Cambridge, UK
Carmelo Giacovazzo, Bari, Italy
Xavier Gomis-Ruth, Barcelona, Spain
Juan Hermoso, Madrid, Spain
Eugene Krissinel, Oxford, UK
Rob Nicholls, Cambridge, UK
Maria Solá, Barcelona, Spain
Isabel Usón, Barcelona, Spain

The workshop has been designed for postgraduate, postdoctoral and research scientists that deal with macromolecular crystallography but need further knowledge on the routine uses, the state of the art and fundamentals that underlie the modern techniques for macromolecular crystallography. The topics will cover crystallographic computing and fundamentals using XDS, CCP4 and Phenix, as well as the state of the art on topics such as the strategies for protein production, phasing with ARCIMBOLDO, SHELX and SIR2014, modeling with COOT and low resolution techniques. MCS2016 will provide five days of lectures and workshops. The course is designed for 25 highly motivated students.

Requests to participate must be sent by a free-formated E-mail, before March 28, 2016 to the following address: [email protected], indicating the motivation to participate and experience on macromolecular crystallography and including a letter of recommendation from PhD Director (only for PhD students). Accepted participants will be notified by e-mail before April 4, 2016.

Topics include:

• Sample preparation
• Biophysical & biochemical characterization
• 3D structure determination
• Structure-based ligand design
• Structural biology data management

Target Group & Selection process

The workshop targets mainly PhD students and postdoctoral researchers who are currently working in the structural biology field and have already some experience in working with macromolecules. Experienced researchers will also be considered but priority will be given to younger scientists. A total of 20 participants will be accepted in the workshop. The applicants will be expected to send a CV (max. 2 pages), a motivation letter (max. 1 page) explaining why they wish to participate and what they expect from the course and a reference letter. Biostruct-X and local organizers will be responsible for the selection process to ensure that equivalent criteria will be applied.

Benefits

Participants that have been accepted to the course are offered to send protein samples for characterization and crystallization to the Sample Preparation and Characterization (SPC) facility at the EMBL in Hamburg. The samples must be relatively pure (>90 % according to SDS-PAGE). The SPC will offer a preliminary sparse matrix screen that can be customized to the particular sample, as well as complementary characterization by thermal shift assay, dynamic light scattering and mass spectrometry. For more information, please visit the SPC website: http://www.embl-hamburg.de/services/spc/.
Participants are also offered to bring their own protein *(around 60 μl or even less around 10 μl at exceptional cases) and set up their a "Random" Microseeding experiment using the Douglas Instruments protein crystallization robot installed at NHRF under the guidance of the manufacturers (http://www.douglas.co.uk). They should also bring along crystals if any available, to make the seed stock screens. If the condition that the protein crystallizes is known, it is also recommended that participants bring their crystallization buffer as well.

Host

The event will be hosted by NHRF, coordinator of Instruct-EL, the national distributed research infrastructure that functions as a hub for structural biology in South East European area and Cyprus as part of a broader national RI.

More information will be available on NHRF website: http://www.eie.gr/index-en.html

The school will be held at the Centre for Free-Electron Laser Science at DESY

Prof. Carmelo Giacovazzo will give a full week of lectures on the basics
of crystallography and modern phasing methods in protein crystallography.
The course will cover mathematical understanding of crystallographic point
and space groups, systematic absences, diffraction experiments, structure
factor calculations, and other related topics. Besides the lectures, there
will be talks on applications of protein crystallography using advanced
light sources, such as 3rd generation synchrotron and X-ray Free Electron
Lasers (FELs). The course is aimed at PhD students working in the field of
crystallography, but exceptions can be made for motivated PostDocs and MSc
students. This will NOT be a workshop covering protein crystallographic
programs.

Speakers: Prof. Carmelo Giacovazzo (University of Bari), Prof. Henry Chapman (CFEL / DESY, University of Hamburg), Prof. Arwen Pearson (CUI, University of Hamburg), Dr Thomas White (CFEL / DESY), Dr Adrian Mancuso (XFEL.eu), Dr Thomas Schneider (EMBL), Gleb Bourenkov (EMBL), more TBA

Besides the lessons there will be guided tours of PETRAIII/European XFEL, a BBQ and a harbor boat trip scheduled.

The registration fee is 100 EUR per person, and includes coffee breaks and
lunch.

Applicants must(!) provide a motivation letter and a CV, directly to the
organizer Max Wiedorn ([email protected]). The number of participants is
limited to 35. Accommodations can be made at the DESY Guest House: 70 EUR per person for 7 nights (28.05 - 04.06.2016).

This scattering workshop is for those with an interest in soft condensed matter as found in biology, polymer science, the colloidal domain and interfacial science.

The workshop has some leading experimentalists giving tutorials on light scattering, small-angle scattering, grazing incidence scattering, pulsed field gradient NMR and reflectivity.

We will also host a small number of science talks but the primary focus of the meeting is to introduce researchers to a range of scattering techniques, with emphasis on their application to research in soft matter.

The workshop will be held at RMIT University's Melbourne city campus from the 11th to the 12th of Feb. Attendance is free but registration is necessary. There is some support available for students to attend the meeting from Australia and New Zealand.

Organisers: Dr Chris Garvey ([email protected]) or Prof Gary Bryant ([email protected])

The application package consisting of (1) Information form, (2) CV, (3) Applicant motivation letter (1/2 to 1 page), (4) Principal Investigator letter of support (for graduate students only; 1/2 to 1 page), should be sent electronically to [email protected] before April 1, 2016.Â

Detailed information can be found on the workshop web page: https://conference.sns.gov/event/15

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This course is aimed at structural biologists with high resolution EM maps
ready for / in the process of modelling building and refinement. This
three day course will host some of the leading software developers and
provide ample contact time to allow delegates to discuss their data in
detail alongside traditional lectures and tutorials.

The course will be held at the RAL / Diamond campus, Harwell, UK.
Registration is free and we will provide food and two nights accommodation
at the Bear Hotel in nearby Wantage (2nd & 3rd March). Delegates are asked
to meet their own travel costs.

The course is limited to 20 delegates which will be selected from all
applicants. A maximum of 50 applicants can register interest.

Applications will close on Tuesday 2nd February and the 20 successful
applicants will be notified the following day.

* Confirmed tutors:

Kevin Cowtan (Buccaneer, York)
Paul Emsley (Coot, MRC-LMB Cambridge)
Agnel Joseph (FlexEM, Birkbeck)
Garib Murshudov (Refmac5, MRC-LMB Cambridge)
Maya Topf (FlexEM, Birkbeck)

Regulating and Re-Engineering Chromatin: Control of Genome Function

Sessions include:

24th February afternoon optional session Hands on software:

 *  MX pipelines and XIA2 at Diamond
 *  Tutorial sessions:
    *  CCP4i2: scaling with Aimless, phasing and refinement (CCP4 team)
    *  Data processing with DIALS

25th February session on MX beamlines:

 *  Mini-Kappa goniometry / Anomalous data collection
 *  Sample humidity control (HC1)
 *  I24 new end station/ In situ diffraction
 *  Fragment screening in crystals - I04-1/Lab36
 *  Experiment database: ISPyB

Registration is free-of-charge with lunch provided on the 24th and 25th February, and accommodation and dinner for the night of the 24th February. Travelling expenses within the UK will also be provided. The training is targeted at all users, and is not limited to students and post docs. It is essential that each BAG sends at least one representative per calendar year.

Places are limited to twenty five participants. The registration deadline is on the 4th February.

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Keynote Lecture

Dr Sandra JACOB (NOVARTIS INSTITUTES FOR BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH, Basel, Switzerland)

Session 1 : Emerging Technologies

Dr Gebhard F. X. SCHERTLER (PAUL SCHERRER INSTITUTE, Villigen, Switzerland)

Session 2 : Biophysics for Challenging Targets

Prof. Ben SCHULER (UNIVERSITY OF ZURICH, Switzerland)

Session 3 : Special Focus on Cryo-EM

Prof. Holger STARK (MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR BIOPHYSICAL CHEMISTRY, Göttingen, Germany)

Session 4 : Computational Biophysics

Prof. Rebecca WADE (UNIVERSITY OF HEIDELBERG, Germany)

Session 5 : Cellular Biophysics

Prof. Suzi JARVIS (UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN, Ireland)

Session 6 : Biophysics for Biotherapeutics

Dr Jim BRYSON (BRISTOL-MYERS SQUIBB R&D, New York, USA)

The course covers a multidisciplinary approach to study the structure of
challenging proteins, focusing on membrane proteins and large complexes.
The basic principles will be provided for each addressed technique
(Macromolecular Crystallography, Mass Spectrometry and Electron
Microscopy); their applications in biological systems, major benefits
and limitations will also be discussed.

The Workshop is organized with lectures in the mornings followed by
hands-on training. The course is aimed primarily at PhD students and
young Post-Doctoral researchers interested in Structural Biology.
Confirmed speakers are Jose Maria Carazo, Dmitri Svergun and Isabel de
Moraes.

 Participants will be limited to 20. Candidate selection will be based on
a short CV, a motivation letter from the applicant, and a recommendation
letter from the supervisor.

Registration deadline is February 23. Please send your application to
[email protected]. Registration fee is 180Eur including
accommodation.

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The European XFEL Users' Meeting is an annual opportunity to strengthen the interaction between the European XFEL project and the scientific user community. The scope of this meeting includes:

• Progress and current status of the European XFEL
• Instrument design developments & advances
• Selected science applications
• Current developments in the field of XFEL facilities

Satellite meetings/workshops

Sample Environments for Biology at XFELs: 26th January 2016

From Picoseconds to Femtosecond X-Ray Experiments: 26th January 2016

4th Satellite Workshop on Photon Beam Diagnostics: 28th January 2016

Status and Science at HED instrument and of the HIBEF UC: 28th January 2016

Mechanisms of Actions of Large Macromolecular Machines on Genes Across Biological Scales

The 2016 mog meeting brings together a highly interdisciplinary group of scientists with the common goal of dissecting the operating principles of large macromolecular machines acting on nucleic acids, using structural and functional approaches across all biological length and time scales. The meeting showcases recent advance in the field, with an emphasis on mechanistic insights using a diverse range of approaches. This meeting brings together scientists from different disciplines, and we expect a strong synergy between the participants from different continents. The 2016 mog meeting will thus facilitate interactions to inspire new science and innovations in the area of nucleic-acid biology.

Topics

• Birth, Life, & Death of Proteins
• Protein Evolution & Design
• Protein Folding & Misfolding
• Emerging Methods for Protein Research
• Membrane Protein Folding & Function
• Proteins on the Move
• Applied Protein Research
• Dynamic Modulation of Protein Function
• Interface Between Proteins & Nucleic Acids
• Interdisciplinary Approaches to Protein Science

FEBS/IUBMB Advanced Lecture Course