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Macromolecular Structure Database Group - EMBO Lecture Course




 3D Structure Databases - Uses for Biological Problem solving

Sponsorship for this course has been received from EMBO and also from the BIOXHIT Project which is funded by the European Commission within its FP6 Programme, under the thematic area "Life Sciences, Genomics and Biotechnology for Health", contract number LHSG-CT-2003-503420.

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This EMBO Lecture Course will be held at Homerton College (Cambridge University), Hills Road, Cambridge, UK from Sunday September 19, 2004 to Friday September 24, 2004

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co-organisers

Professor Janet Thornton (European Bioinformatics Institute)
Dr Gerard Kleywegt (Uppsala University)
Dr Jaime Prilusky (Weizmann Institute of Science)
Dr Helen M. Berman (Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey)

Major objectives of the lecture course

The course will teach the basic principles aspects of 3D database technology and the associated tools for data analysis to bioscientists wishing to understand the wealth of structure information available. The course is aimed at PhD students and postdocs to give them a familiarity with how structure data can be used in their own projects.

Databases for 3D structural data for proteins and nucleic acids, together with the associated access tools have matured into a major tool for molecular biology. The course is intended to cover the background to relational databases and the computational aspects of characterising structure of biological macromolecules.

The importance of databases in biological research has been stressed in the recent Nature technology feature by Buckingham [1]. In the United States, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced a new initiative, Biological Databases and Informatics Program Announcement' [2], with the belief that future advances in the biological sciences will depend both upon the creation of new knowledge and upon effective management of proliferating information. Further general background can be found in references 3 and 4.

  1. S. Buckingham Data's future shock (2004) Nature 428, 774-777
  2. Biological Databases and Informatics Program Announcement NSF 02-058 http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2002/nsf02058/nsf02058.html
  3. Michael Y. Galperin (2004) The Molecular Biology Database Collection: 2004 update. Nucleic Acids Research. 32, Database issue D3-D22
  4. Andrej Sali, Robert Glaeser, Thomas Earnest & Wolfgang Baumeister (2003) From words to literature in structural proteomics NATURE, 422, 216-225
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