News

Instruct-ULTRA Final General Assembly

The final Instruct-ULTRA General Assembly (GA) took place on 26 November 2020. As the final GA of the ULTRA project, the event was an opportunity to reflect on the achievements and outcomes of the ULTRA project, while also looking ahead to the continuation of this work through Instruct-ERIC. The meeting, which was attended by 40 representatives from across the ULTRA partners, included both presentations...

Instruct-ULTRA funds Open Call for Glycan Analysis

  As part of Instruct-ERIC's efforts to provide new services to the user base, Instruct is exploring the possibility of providing access to technology found in its member countries, but outside of official Instruct Centres. In this vein, Instruct-ULTRA piloted an Open Call for Glycan Analysis, a specialist service provided by the Institute of Chemistry at the Slovak Academy of Sciences. The institute provided expertise in analysis of the structure,...

4th Instruct Best Practices in Cryo-EM Workshop

  On 12 – 13 October 2020, scientists from around the world convened online for Instruct-ERIC’s annual Best Practices in Cryo-EM Workshop. Now in its fourth year, the Instruct-ULTRA-funded workshop enables those involved in running high-end cryo-EM facilities to discuss and share best practice. The workshop is open to EM facility scientists, managers and computing specialists from both academia and industry. This year, the Best...

A celebration of Instruct-ERIC: achievements, impact and expanding ambitions

  On 16 September 2020, a virtual event was held to celebrate the achievements of Instruct-ERIC in the time since achieving European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) status in 2017. During an afternoon of selected talks, the Instruct-ULTRA-funded event celebrated the achievements of Instruct-ERIC, recognising the hard work and commitment of the consortium, staff, supporters and users, in the wider context of the successful European...

The quality control training school: a joint Instruct-ULTRA and ARBRE-MOBIEU course

  In October 2019, eleven early-career scientists from institutes across Europe gathered at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, to gain hands-on training in quality control for structural studies. Quality control is a critical practice for ensuring the integrity, reliability, and reproducibility of structural biology data. In particular, quality control provides important, reportable checkpoints that can be used to independently assess the conclusions...

3rd Instruct Workshop for Best Practice in CryoEM

On 19 November 2019, scientists from facilities across the world gathered at the IGBMC in Strasbourg (Instruct Centre France 1) for the annual Instruct Workshop for Best Practice in CryoEM. The two-day workshop, which receives funding from the Instruct-ULTRA project, is now in its third year, following the success and popularity of previous workshops in Harwell (Oxfordshire, UK) in May 2017 and NeCEN (Leiden, Netherlands) in October 2018. The Instruct...

ULTRA-funded project advances data transfer between protein crystallography experiments at the homelab and synchrotron

At the second joint MXCuBE/ISPyB meeting at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, Prof Rik Wierenga from the Faculty of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine (FBMM) at the University of Oulu, presented an update on a new data-transfer protocol to coordinate protein crystallography experiments at the homelab and synchrotron, which has been developed with funding from the Instruct-ULTRA project. In 2018, the University of Oulu was awarded funding from Instruct-ULTRA,...

Open Call - New Test Access for Structural Biology Technologies through Instruct-ULTRA

  A call is open for users of new technologies being developed as part of the Instruct-ULTRA project. This is an exciting opportunity for users to develop their own research project using high-end technologies, gaining training and support from experts in the field. The successful applicants will be invited to attend a research visit to the host laboratory, with the user bringing their own sample for testing. The purpose of this call is to...

Instruct-ULTRA sponsored symposium at EBSA

The 2019 European Biophysical Societies Association (EBSA) conference took place in Madrid from 20-24 July, demonstrating a breadth of biophysical studies and their applications across the biological sciences. On Wednesday 24 July, Instruct-ERIC hosted a Structural Biology Symposium, which was supported by Instruct-ULTRA - the booster project widening European access to structural biology services, training and expertise. The symposium included scientific...

International outreach project supports training for early-career scientist

For early-career researchers, experience of the latest scientific methods can have a profound impact on career development and can boost the research capabilities of the individual and their home institution. Through initiatives such as Instruct-ULTRA travel grants, popular training courses are being made accessible to scientists from across the globe. The EMBO Practical Course on High-Throughput Protein Production and Crystallisation has been...

Widening Instruct-ERIC access to the Imaging Community

  One of the aims of Instruct-ULTRA is to widen the reach of Instruct-ERIC to new communities where structural biology is less well known. The European Molecular Imaging Meeting (EMIM), 19-22 March, provided a great opportunity to co-host a session with Euro-BioImaging to introduce these two research infrastructures. A particular highlight was the captivating talk by Prof Bruno Klaholz from the Instruct-FR centre, which captured the advances...

Training the next generation of structural biologists in South Africa

  A workshop for PhD students and early career researchers on Biophysics & Structural Biology at Synchrotrons was held recently at the University of Cape Town (17-24 January 2019). The workshop introduced young South African researchers to the power of synchrotron based facilities and addressed the technology required to go from gene to structure. Topics covered included, advanced strategies for crystallization, high-throughput...

Instruct hosts Networking Session at FENS forum

In July 2019, Instruct hosted a special networking session at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) Forum meeting.Prof Radu Ariescu from University of Cambridge gave a fascinating talk about Instruct services allowed him to solve the protein structure of a notoriously difficult yet scientifically significant membrane protein, the GABAA receptor complex. Naomi Gray followed with a short introduction to Instruct-ERIC,...

Research Projects awarded for Instruct-ULTRA call to enrich and expand access providing services

Five research projects have been awarded for the second Instruct-ULTRA call to develop existing technologies and widen structural biology access to new communities. Two of the projects involve collaborations with countries outside of the current Instruct-ERIC membership: Masarykova Univerzita (Czech Republic) is working with the University of Vienna to develop nuclear magnetic resonance paramagnetic relaxation methods for studies...

NMR Position Paper Published

Instruct-ULTRA announces the publication of a position paper on the operation of NMR services and RIs in general as a guide for Users. Beginning with an NMR European landscape analysis, the paper presents the opportunities offered in Europe to access NMR facilities and expertise to a broad audience. The guide specifically addresses non expert users, wishing to exploit the use of this technology in their research. During the...

Instruct-ULTRA Annual Meeting

The second annual meeting for Instruct-ULTRA took place in March 2018, at St Annes College, Oxford. We welcomed 65 participants from our fifteen partner countries. Scientific short talks included latest work using cryo-EM to elucidate the structure and genome delivery mechanism of bacteriophage phi812, NMR approaches for protein determination and fascinating uses for nanobodies in structural biology research.For podcasts of four of the scientific...

First Instruct Workshop on cryoEM best practices

The First Instruct Workshop on cryoEM best practices took place on 9-10 May at the Research Complex at Harwell and was attended by 29 participants, including from industry (FEI, GSK, Vertex, Astrazeneca). The meeting covered both operational and computational methods through short scene-setting presentations from Instruct Centres (Peijun Zhang, eBIC; Ludo Renault, NeCEN, Bruno Klaholz, IGBMC, Martyn Winn CCP-EM, Jose-Maria Carazo, CNB-CSIC and Juha...

Instruct-ULTRA project funded by H2020

Instruct has secured funding for expanding the implementation of its services to its user community. The aim of the project, called Instruct-ULTRA, is to advance the scope and efficiency of Instruct service delivery (mainly access to infrastructure and training) and establish a strategy for a sustainable future. The proposed workplan includes engaging with communities outside Europe and strengthening relationships with industry. Instruct-ULTRA is...