Hi Artem, you are certainly correct in that James' points 2-9 would be moot if his point 1 were solved. But as long as this is not the case, we resort to work with few and/or small and/or badly diffracting and/or non-isomorphous crystals, which makes points 2-9 very relevant.
Maybe the reason why crystallization research is not well funded is that it is not expected to yield significant improvements. Personally, I think that even huge funding would not result in methods that succeed in crystallizing all molecules. best, Kay On Sun, 21 Jul 2019 11:28:14 -0400, Artem Evdokimov <artem.evdoki...@gmail.com> wrote: >Excellent question :) > >First of all, thank you for putting this out to the community! > >Secondly, I agree with several of us who've written that a single >conference is not enough to discuss all the possible topics. > >Thirdly, in my opinion all the other problems are secondary to the main >(and only remaining!) problem in crystallography: getting >diffraction-quality protein crystals reproducibly and quickly > >The amount of funding for serious crystallization research seems to be >close to non-existent. In general methodology funding is hard to get, but >crystallization seems to me like the absolute underdog of the method pool - >the true 'red headed stepchild' of the methods development funders. > >At risk of repeating myself - the other problems (worthy, significant, and >urgent as they are!) are subservient to the main issue at hand - namely >that crystallization remains an unpredictable and artful phenomenon while >literally all other aspects of structure determination process (the gene to >structure pipeline, whatever you might call it)have made astronomic leaps >forward. > >Artem >- Cosmic Cats approve of this message > > >On Mon, Jul 15, 2019 at 3:44 PM Holton, James M < >0000270165b9f4cf-dmarc-requ...@jiscmail.ac.uk> wrote: > >> Hello folks, >> >> I have the distinct honor of chairing the next Gordon Research >> Conference on Diffraction Methods in Structural Biology (July 26-31 >> 2020). This meeting will focus on the biggest challenges currently >> faced by structural biologists, and I mean actual real-world >> challenges. As much as possible, these challenges will take the form of >> friendly competitions with defined parameters, data, a scoring system, >> and "winners", to be established along with other unpublished results >> only at the meeting, as is tradition at GRCs. >> >> But what are the principle challenges in biological structure >> determination today? I of course have my own ideas, but I feel like I'm >> forgetting something. Obvious choices are: >> 1) getting crystals to diffract better >> 2) building models into low-resolution maps (after failing at #1) >> 3) telling if a ligand is really there or not >> 4) the phase problem (dealing with weak signal, twinning and >> pseudotranslation) >> 5) what does "resolution" really mean? >> 6) why are macromolecular R factors so much higher than small-molecule >> ones? >> 7) what is the best way to process serial crystallography data? >> 8) how should one deal with non-isomorphism in multi-crystal methods? >> 9) what is the "structure" of something that won't sit still? >> >> What am I missing? Is industry facing different problems than >> academics? Are there specific challenges facing electron-based >> techniques? If so, could the combined strength of all the world's >> methods developers solve them? I'm interested in hearing the voice of >> this community. On or off-list is fine. >> >> -James Holton >> MAD Scientist >> >> >> ######################################################################## >> >> To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: >> https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1 >> > >######################################################################## > >To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: >https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1 > ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1
