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Report of the Scientific Advisory Committee - Sep. 9th 2003
The SAC panel composed of Kristina Djinovic, Louise Johnson, Doriano Lamba, and Andrea Musacchio met with Prof. Lucio Randaccio and Prof. Silvano Geremia. Apologies were received from the SAC on behalf of Prof. Martino Bolognesi and Prof. Gabriele Cruciani, who were unable to attend the meeting. The discussion focussed on biocrystallography since other members of CEB, i.e. Prof. Del Sal, Prof. Linda, Prof. Manzini, and Prof. Romeo were not present at the meeting. SAC had received a 2nd year report dated May 31st, 2003, which covered the activities of all members of CEB.
Prof. Randaccio reported that the instrumentation for CEB was suitable for the proposed studied. Clearly there had been problems in the past with the X-ray detector, but these are now on the verge of being solved with the acquisition of a new CCD camera kappa CCD2000 from Bruker-Nonius. A new postdoctoral fellow will be appointed shortly under CEB funding.
CEB had a strong graduate training program. One student (Giampiero Garau) has completed his doctorate and now has a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship at the IBS in Grenoble. A further student should complete his doctorate this year and has been awarded a postdoctoral position in the USA. There are also five further students on course. In addition the centre has been successful in attracting laurea students from other universities. For the future the centre has been awarded one graduate student position. There is clearly a demand for well-trained students in structural biology and SAC recommends that the training program of graduate students should be made as strong as possible.
In connection with graduate training, the “Biocrystallography course: from gene to drug” is being highly successful. There are over sixty participants, of whom about 30 % are from outside Italy. The course has received financial support from the European Science Foundation and Consorzio per lo Sviluppo Internazionale dell’Universita’ di Trieste. Program covers all aspects of structural biology and all students have received an excellent collection of lecture notes.
The financial support from the Ministry of University will end in May 2004, and the members of the CEB have made efforts for ensuring continuing funding and have been successful in two significant awards from the FIRB (Fondo Investimento per la Ricerca di Base) program. CoFin funding will also be available next year. Clearly there are problems for longer term funding, and the SAC envisages that contributions from structural biology of CEB are essential for its success. We noted that several of the new projects touched problems with important biomedical implications, which the SAC believes is key for CEB activities. The SAC recommended that CEB will try to make any effort to try joining a new initiative called Consorzio di Biomedicina Molecolare (CMB), which will gather a number of prominent scientific institutions of the Friuli area.
The scientific productivity of CEB has been high. There are 31 publications listed for 2002-2003 from the three workpackages (WPs), all of which are in international journals. In particular, we note that WP3 reported publications in Nature and other highly visible journals. In the biocrystallography workpackage (WP1) the main achievements concerned the structure determination of an artificial four-helix bundle metalloprotein, which gave raise to a sliding helix mechanism by which metalloproteins may accommodate changes in their metal environment (Angewandte Chemie). The structure solution led to a new method for phasing protein structures that was recently published in Acta Cryst. D. Further structural work on the Cytochrome C2 of Rhodopseudomonas palustris in the oxidized and reduced states has been reported in Protein Science, and an elaboration on the relationship between the redox potential and the hydrogen-bonding network was published in FEBS Letters. The collaboration between Prof. Geremia, Prof. Manzini, and Dr. Tell addressing protein-DNA complexes is being successful. In particular, the transcriptional regulator Pax8 was crystallized with its cognate DNA oligonucleotide. The latter is an excellent example of collaboration within the workpackages of CEB, and should be taken as a model for operation of CEB in the future. The SAC envisages that collaboration between structural and cellular biology, which is embedded within the mission of CEB, is the key for its success in funding and scientific productivity.
Louise Johnson
Kristina Djinovic
Doriano Lamba
Andrea Musacchio
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