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competitions with defined parameters, data, a scoring system, and "winners", to be established along with other unpublished results only at the meeting, as is tradition at GRCs.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
