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Division of Labor
The initial focus of Wilson's consortium will be on the
nematode, C. elegans. The group has divided the responsibilities
for developing technology and determining protein structure
into three areas, reflected organizationally in three core
groups.
The bioinformatics core is headed by Adam Godzik of UCSD.
UCSD and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor Susan Taylor
will be responsible for target selection. The focus will be
on the large group of proteins implicated in cell signaling
(information transmission within and between cells), which
may provide clues to many aspects of disease. Bioinformatics,
the study of the inherent structure of biological information
and biological systems, will help identify the most promising
targets and ascertain related proteins in the fruit fly, mouse,
human, and yeast. The handling, manipulation, analysis, and
storage of the vast amounts of data will be carried out by
the Bioinformatics Core.
The crystallomics core, led by Stevens, will focus on sequences
specified by the target selection committee, expressing, purifying,
and crystallizing these proteins. Using technology initially
developed by Schultz and Stevens at the Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory and more recently at GNF, the crystallomics
group will utilize a high-throughput robotic production line
that can produce thousands of samples of purified proteins
per year and perform over a hundred thousand crystallization
screens a day. This group will then deliver crystals to the
structure determination core.
The structure determination core, led by Peter Kuhn, assistant
professor and Macromolecular Crystallography Group co-leader
at the SSRL, will handle high-throughput structure determination
and refinement. The SSRL, which provides synchrotron radiation
(x-rays or light produced by electrons circulating in a storage
ring at nearly the speed of light) to bombard the crystals
and obtain diffraction data, will provide the group with a
powerful resource for structure determination.
Wilson comments, "As we progress through the project, we
will be generating enormous amounts of information. We plan
to record all our results, negative as well as positive. Scientists
who come later will know what didn't work for us as well as
what did."
Five years hence, those involved in the Joint Center for
Structural Genomics hope to have solved 2,000 protein structures,
be prepared for the design and implementation of the next
generation of high-throughput technology, and—perhaps
most importantly—have created the infrastructure to significantly
advance our understanding of some fundamental principals of
biology.
"Administering a multi-institutional collaboration has its
challenges," comments Wilson, "But in this case it also offers
a unique opportunity: to integrate biophysics in ‘La
Jolla Mesa.’"
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“Administering
a multi-institutional collaboration has its challenges. But
in this case it also offers a unique opportunity: to integrate
biophysics in ‘La Jolla Mesa.’”
—Ian
Wilson
See also:
The
Joint Center for Structural Genomics
The
Wilson lab home page
News Release
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