Instruct-ERIC Newsletter
Winter 2021
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International collaboration in research is crucial for the advancement of science and understanding throughout the world. This is particularly the case for research infrastructures, such as Instruct-ERIC, whose entire ethos is to provide access to advanced scientific technology and equipment for all. Expanding horizons beyond Europe, Instruct has played a central role in developing regional partnerships and creating a framework for international access to research infrastructure.
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International Collaboration with Research Infrastructures
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The 2nd international call has been completed with many applications from researchers in institutions that hold an MOU with Instruct-ERIC to access European centres. The call provides an opportunity for international researchers to utilise Instruct technologies, and to exchange experience and best practices with the centres.
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Instruct-ERIC Biennial 2022 -
Utrecht, The Netherlands
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The Instruct Biennial Structural Biology Conference (IBSBC) showcases the latest in integrative structural biology from leading scientists across the world.
The 5th Instruct Biennial Structural Biology Conference will be held at Utrecht in the Netherlands, from 18 - 20 May 2022. The theme of the 2022 conference is:
Changes in Structural Biology: Challenges in Studying Dynamics
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Instruct-ERIC Science Highlights
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As part of Instruct-ERIC’s 1st International Call, a research team from Universidade de São Paulo visited Instruct facilities – conducting structural analysis on the formation of septin coiled coils, utilising X-Ray Diffraction technologies to determine that in different environments different orientations are preferred.
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In order to identify the antigenic distance between the SARS-CoV-2 Beta variant and other known variants, Liu et al (2021) assessed the structure of 27 mAbs with the most potent neutralising activity against Beta - also comparing the efficiency of these mAbs at neutralising other variants.
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The RI-VIS Final Meeting will be taking place 17 January 2022. For an extensive overview of the project and what it has achieved, register now to be part of the meeting. Hear from our work package leaders who have managed the project, from International Symposia and Whitepapers to ARIA Sitebuilder and the Communications Toolkit.
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Instruct-ERIC is an observer in the EOSC Association, the legal entity established to govern the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).
The EOSC Association recently put together 13 Task forces that will provide input to the EC regarding the drafting of the next Research Infrastructure Work Programmes in Horizon Europe. 8 Instruct members are now involved in 7 out of these 13 TF which will allow for Instruct to be well represented and influence the decisions making by the EC for the upcoming funding programs and the overall future of the EOSC.
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Within the project EOSC-Life, Instruct partners are developing innovative solutions to promote FAIR and open science in the field of structural biology through 8 pilot projects. These EOSC-Life funded projects focus on developing tools and workflows for: automatic deposition of FAIR Cryo-EM and X-ray crystallography data direct from Instruct facilities, rapid access to ligand screening data with Fragalysis, and bringing IceBear MX data management software and PDB-REDO structure refinement software to the cloud.
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In recent months, requests for iNEXT-Discovery facility access exceeded a total of 270 NMR, crystallography, SAXS, EM and Biophysics projects. For these, over 500 academic and industrial users worldwide received more than 1,200 days of experiments supported by expert researchers. In addition, iNEXT-Discovery managed to ‘hijack’ a full Methods-issue of the Journal of Visualized Experiments to be able to illustrate the routine and specialised structural biology approaches also to non-visiting scientists.
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The TRANSVAC2 TNA call is open until 15 January 2022, providing a wide range of services designed to help researchers across Europe in vaccine research and development. The Horizon 2020 project supports innovation for both prophylactic and therapeutic vaccine development. Instruct-ERIC is offering its services as part of the call, providing access to researchers along the structural biology pathway, TNA 6.
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Instruct-ERIC New Horizon Projects
Instruct-ERIC is a partner in 3 new Horizon projects. BY-COVID aims to expand the availability and enhance FAIRness of COVID-19 data. ISIDORe provides research services from structural biology through to clinical trials to support infectious disease epidemic research including SARS-CoV-2. EOSC Future aims to integrate e-infrastructures, research communities, and initiatives in Open Science to further develop EOSC.
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