Stephen McMahon, Huanting Liu
The Scottish Structural Proteomics Facility was funded to develop a laboratory scale approach to high throughput structure determination. The effort was successful in that over 40 structures were determined. These structures and the methods harnessed to obtain them are reported [Oke, et al., 2010]. This report reflects on the value of automation but also on the continued requirement for a high degree of scientific and technical expertise. The efficiency of the process poses challenges to the current paradigm of structural analysis and publication. In the 5 year period we published ten peer-reviewed papers reporting structural data arising from the pipeline. Nevertheless, the number of structures solved exceeded our ability to analyse and publish each new finding. By reporting the experimental details and depositing the structures we hope to maximize the impact of the project by allowing others to follow up the relevant biology. Much of infrastructure and personnel expertise still resides in the lab so the potential for quick structure solution still exists. To this extent anyone wishing to collaborate on the structure determination of any protein is encourage to get in touch [Jim Naismith].
Oke M, Carter LG, Johnson KA, Liu H, McMahon SA, Yan X, Kerou M, Weikart ND, Kadi N, Sheikh MA, Schmelz S, Dorward M, Zawadzki M, Cozens C, Falconer H, Powers H, Overton IM, van Niekerk CA, Peng X, Patel P, Garrett RA, Prangishvili D, Botting CH, Coote PJ, Dryden DT, Barton GJ, Schwarz-Linek U, Challis GL, Taylor GL, White MF, Naismith JH.(2010) The Scottish Structural Proteomics Facility: targets, methods and outputs. J. Struct. Funct. Genomics 11:167-80.