Instruct – an integrated structural biology infrastructure for europe

New rules and pri or i ties re gard ing sup port of key re search in fra struc tures in Eu rope are be ing de fined by the Eu ro pean Strat egy Fo rum on Re search In fra struc tures (ESFRI). In te grated Struc tural Bi ol ogy In fra struc ture for Eu rope (INSTRUCT) has been voic ing the needs and pri or i ties of the field and will likely play an im por tant role for the fu ture of mo lec u lar and cel lu lar struc tural bi ol ogy re search in Eu rope in the com ing years. The Czech Re pub lic has joined the ef fort and be come an af fil i ated coun try of INSTRUCT in 2008. Our par tic i pa tion in the pre pa ra tory phase of INSTRUCT, now ex tended till March 2011, of fers a lim ited space to in flu ence the de vel op ment in clud ing fu ture pol i cies such as sup port of ac cess to heavy tech nol ogy, e.g. syn chro tron ra di a tion sources, cut ting edge NMR or EM tech nol o gies. The pro ject also rep re sents an op por tu nity for de vel op ment of some tech niques and meth od ol o gies (com pu ta tional ap proaches and stan dard iza tion of elec tron mi cros copy im age pro cess ing and other). The Czech struc tural bi ol ogy com mu nity is char ac ter ized by a wide spec trum of ex per i men tal and com pu ta tional ap proaches but lim ited ca pac ity and “sub-crit i cal mass” in many tech niques. For ma tion of a na tional struc tural bi ol ogy plat form to fos ter the fu ture de vel op ment in this field and rep re sent the needs and ben e fits of this re search field in com mu ni ca tion with the Czech Min is try of Ed u ca tion, Youth and Sports and INSTRUCT has been agreed on at the first Na tional User Group meet ing in Prague in De cem ber 2009. The func tion, for mal frame work and le gal sta tus of such na tional plat form are to be dis cussed and es tab lished at this meet ing.