Katia Zanier - CNRS/University of Strasbourg, France
"It is always an enriching experience to interact with my colleagues at the Instruct platforms in Strasbourg. Studying protein-protein interactions in signalling can be challenging due to the transient affinities and this is why we often need to combine several approaches. Hence, the access to the Instruct infrastructure and to the know how of the platform scientists and engineers is vital for the success of this type of projects."
See the full scientific highlight from Zanier and the team here.
E. Yvonne Jones - STRUBI, UK
"Nanobodies played an essential role in our study; we were hugely impressed by the expertise and very grateful for the good-humored support and advice we received at every stage from colleagues at the VIB-VUB center for structural biology in Instruct-BE."
See the full highlight from Jones and the team here.
Laure Yatime - University of Montpellier, France
"This is the second time that we get the opportunity to use the MS platform at IBS Grenoble through Instruct-funded access. The combination of MS techniques we used for the IbeA project was instrumental in elucidating the nature and biological function of this protein that is very important for the AIEC bacteria to survive within host cells and escape immune control inside the gut.
"The whole [access procedure] process went on very smoothly from proposal writing to platform access and we could have all our samples tested in a relatively short time frame. We would certainly not have been able to perform such an integrative study without the Instruct infrastructures."
See the full highlight from Yatime and the team here.
Jan Dohnálek - BIOCEV, Czechia
“Access to the structural biology infrastructure provided by Instruct-ERIC was fundamental for achieving an important part of the results.”
Ondřej Vaněk - Charles University, Czechia
"Instruct was really instrumental to [the project’s] success, both the provided access to various platforms and the R&D Pilot Project funding helping us to achieve the aim of publishing more than just a structure itself, but also its biological implications for immune recognition.”
See the full highlight from Dohnalek, Vaněk, and the team here.
Richard Garratt - University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
"Science is an inherently globalised endeavour and the increasing ease of access to advanced experimental infrastructure is helping to make it more democratic also. The Instruct-ERIC international calls have been fantastic in giving rapid access to Latin American scientists, like ourselves, to the necessary facilities that we need in order to try to remain competitive on the world stage."
See the full highlight from Garratt and the team here.
Hugo van Ingen - Utrecht University, Netherlands
"Thanks to Instruct-ERIC / Instruct-ULTRA we could push the structural characterization of the APLF-histone complex beyond the crystallized APLF fragment and perform integrative NMR and small-angle scattering studies, via access to the bioSAXS facility at DESY/EMBL Hamburg. This provided the key structural information to understand APLF’s function.”
See the full highlight from van Ingen and the team here.
Markus Weingarth - Utrecht University, Netherlands
“In 2019, my colleague Prof. Moreno Lelli from CERM/Florence, and I obtained an Instruct-ERIC Research award (JRA award) that was endowed with €20,000. Our project was entitled 'Solid-State NMR to monitor native drug - receptor interactions in cellular surfaces'. This was a project that I incited because we had a major bottleneck in our understanding of the mode of action of teixobactin.
“Teixobactin, using backbone amino-protons, targets the pyrophosphate group of the cell-wall precursor molecules Lipid II. But it was not known how exactly this worked. To understand this precisely, it was necessary to determine proton - phosphorous distances with solid-state NMR.
“Measuring H-P distances in solids required a special piece of hardware (a 31P-capable ssNMR probehead that enables fast sample spinning up to 60 kHz MAS) that we did not have in Utrecht, but that was available in Florence. With the JRA award, we could kick off our collaboration, and these H-P distances were a key contribution to precisely resolve the teixobactin - Lipid II interface."
See the full highlight from Weingarth and the team here.
