Instruct-ERIC Newsletter - December 2019
As 2019 comes to a close, it is gratifying to reflect on the highlights and achievements of Instruct-ERIC staff, facilities and users from this past year. It has been a momentous year for Instruct, with Finland and EMBL joining as new members, and internationalisation efforts from the Instruct-ULTRA and RI-VIS projects developing new partnerships outside of Europe. The Instruct technology catalogue has continued to grow, with the inauguration of the Astbury Biostructure Laboratory bringing leading cryo-EM and NMR facilities to Instruct-UK. As we look to the new year, we look forward to formalising relationships with Belgium, Finland and EMBL that will make yet more high-end technologies and methods available to scientists in Europe and beyond.
We would like to thank everyone who has played a part in delivering and supporting Instruct activities this year. We look forward to continuing to work together to build a strong infrastructure that serves a growing, international structural biology community.
In 2019, Instruct was delighted to welcome both Finland and EMBL as Instruct Members, following approval by the Instruct Council in May and October, respectively. The new memberships mean that all staff, researchers and students from Finland and EMBL are eligible to apply for funded research and training opportunities from Instruct. We look forward to hosting scientists from Finland, EMBL and all Member Countries over the coming year, and invite you to find out more about the structural biology services available through our Instruct Centres.
2019 has seen the addition of new services to Instruct’s technology catalogue. In November, the Astbury Biostructure Laboratory was formally launched as Instruct research site, adding its cryo-EM and NMR facilities to the Instruct technology catalogue (scroll down to find out more about the inauguration event). We are also delighted to announce that the Instruct Centre Belgium will be expanding its services in the new year. In addition to the Nanobodies4Instruct facility, Robotein at the University of Liege will be offering research visits for high-throughput biophysical protein analysis and screening. We also eagerly anticipate that the evolving partnerships with recent Instruct Members, Finland and EMBL, will lead to even more services being made available to the structural biology community in Europe and beyond.
Periodically, we publish Scientific Highlights on our website and social media to showcase research that has been undertaken at our Instruct Centres. Scientific highlights are short articles that summarise a publication acknowledging support from Instruct. Highlights from 2019 include: ‘Super-resolution microscopy shines a light on the rosette-like structure of the human centromere’ at Instruct-FR1, ‘Mapping the movements of the mitochondrial ADP/ATP carrier’ using nanobody technology at Instruct-BE, and ‘Structural biology techniques used to benefit bees and beyond’ at Instruct-CZ.
You can browse all of the Scientific Highlights online. If you would like to feature a research paper that acknowledges Instruct-ERIC as a Scientific Highlight, contact stephanie@instruct-eric.eu.
In order to equip scientists with knowledge of the latest technologies and methods in structural biology, Instruct-ERIC funds an annual training programme of hands-on workshops. In 2020, the Instruct Training Programme is set to include the ‘Instruct course on the development of image processing workflows in streaming and structural data analysis components for electron microscopy’ from Instruct-ES, as well as two workshops in cryo-EM sample preparation from Instruct-UK. In addition, the Instruct-ULTRA project is funding the ‘Instruct theoretical and practical course: integrative structural biology in Latin America’ in Rosario, Argentina, in October 2020, which is co-organised with Instruct-FR1.
The full 2020 Instruct Training Programme will be published early in the new year.
Each year, the Instruct Internship Programme funds 3-6 month research visits to our Instruct Centres in Europe. The internships, which are fully funded for scientists from Instruct Member countries, support early-career researchers in developing their expertise in structural biology methods, and help to widen access to European collaborations. Five internships were awarded this year, enabling scientists from Finland, Italy, Portugal and the UK to undertake research projects at Instruct Centres in the Czech Republic, France and the UK. In addition, a student from Israel was awarded funded access to undertake research at Instruct-UK.
Look out for announcements about the 2021 Internship Programme, which will open for applications in Summer 2020.
Recently, Instruct initiated a programme to pilot a revised funding model for research visits. The pilot is evaluating the impact of extending the funding available, thereby making it more attractive to both users and facilities. The new model is closely equivalent with that which is used in the INFRA-IA transnational access projects, funded through Horizon 2020.
In August, Instruct-ERIC launched new features for its access and service management system, ARIA. These updates have improved messaging in ARIA, and introduced further API integrations with Instruct facilities, namely the Diamond Light Source. You can read more about the updates here.
On 25 November, Instruct-ULTRA was delighted to host the official launch of the Astbury Biostructure Laboratory as an Instruct research site. The event was packed with cutting-edge science, as facility staff showcased the NMR, mass spectrometry and cryo-EM technology and expertise of the Astbury Centre. Attendees were also treated to two outstanding keynote lectures from Dr Matt Johnson (University of Sheffield) and Dr Andrew Baldwin (University of Oxford).
Accepting a commemorative plaque from Instruct Hub Coordinator, Dr Susan Daenke, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Leeds, Sir Alan Langlands, reflected on the world-leading facilities at the Astbury Centre and the important role of Instruct-ERIC in facilitating integrative and collaborative science.
The RI-VIS project works to increase the visibility of European Research Infrastructures such as Instruct-ERIC and to promote international collaboration. The project brings together participants from many Research Infrastructures and is coordinated by Instruct-ERIC.
In RI-VIS, we have had a busy few months preparing the event schedule for 2020 and beyond. RI-VIS will be hosting three major international symposia aimed at building international collaboration between European Research Infrastructures and counterparts in wider host regions. Our first symposium will be in Cape Town South Africa 23-24 March and will invite African and European Research Infrastructures, scientists, funders and policy makers to participate in an interactive event of talks, panel discussions, networking activities and poster presentations.
For more information and to register, please visit our event page. Future events in the series will be hosted in Campinas Brazil in November 2020 and Australia in 2021.
Meanwhile, communications experts from Research Infrastructures in all sectors came together in Paris for the second RI-VIS communication workshop. The workshop was a working event where tools for the RI-VIS Communication Toolkit were developed. The Communication Toolkit will provide resources to help research infrastructures to communicate better to a variety of audiences using different methods and platforms. The workshop also provided a rare opportunity for communications officers from the different infrastructures to come together and share best practices. We will be publishing the fruits of this work following the third RI-VIS workshop in February 2020. Please get in touch with coordinator@ri-vis.eu to find out more or to get involved.
The final CORBEL meeting will take place on 2 March 2020 in Florence, Italy. The consortium will present their solutions for harmonising user access to the European Life Science Research Infrastructures, including access, data or quality management, training and innovation support. Presentations by scientists from the biological and medical user communities will illustrate how concerted access to multiple RIs has advanced their projects, demonstrating the benefit of CORBEL for European life science research. To find out more and to register, click here.
You can find more news, events and previous newsletters on our website.
For regular updates, follow @Instructhub on Twitter.
