Recent Event: A symposium entitled New Challenges in the Life Sciences: Prioritizing European Research in Molecular Systems Biology was held on October 18-19, 2007 in Florence, Italy, to provide a forum for the scientific community involved in on-going major European post-genomic projects to discuss the importance of molecular research for advancing systems biology. The meeting was organized in conjunction with the Forum for European Structural Proteomics (FESP), and involved about 30 experts, representing the multidisciplinary nature of the field, and including scientists and policy-makers from the US, China, Japan, India, and Europe.

Fundamental properties of biological systems rely on the spatial and temporal interactions of the macromolecules that compose the system and can only be understood by looking at the system as a whole. An understanding of molecular systems biology, i.e. the ability to model systems to predict biological outcome at the molecular level, is unthinkable without an appreciation of the dynamic structure of proteins, the specificity of protein-protein interactions and the resulting properties of molecular machines, pathways and entire networks.

The consensus document from the meeting is available from the NMR-Life website.

Upcoming Meetings: A meeting entitled Networking in Bio-NMR is being organized on January 5, 2008 for representatives of national, regional and other major bio-NMR infrastructures as they address the new challenges posed to NMR by their users. The scientific community has reaffirmed that NMR, as an invaluable tool for the investigation of the structure and dynamics of biomolecules, plays a crucial role in disciplines such as structural biology and systems biology. By jointly identifying the upcoming frontier scientific issues and the technologies, knowledge, and expertise which will be required to explore them, research will be driven forward faster and further than has been previously possible. This meeting will provide an opportunity for NMR infrastructure operators to address their modes of interaction in such a way that the position of individual NMR centers will be bolstered, the NMR community in general will be strengthened, and the positive impact that NMR has on science will be maximized.

A meeting entitled Advances in Structural Studies of Large Protein-Nucleic Acid Complexes will be held in Brno from February 1-2, 2008. A number of scientists from Europe and the United States will give talks on various subjects, ranging from the biological aspects of large protein-nucleic acid complexes to the application of NMR and other analytical tools to their study.The series of talks will be followed by a general round table discussion.

e-NMR: A new EC-funded project entitled Deploying and unifying the NMR e-Infrastructure in Systems Biology (e-NMR) was launched at the beginning of November. The main objective of this project is to optimize and extend the use of NMR research infrastructures through the implementation of an e-infrastructure, in order to provide the European bio-NMR user community with a platform integrating and streamlining the computational approaches necessary for bio-NMR data analysis (e-NMR). The e-NMR infrastructure will be based on the Grid infrastructure realized by projects such as EGEE/EGEE II.

The project will tackle the following objectives: i) establish a human collaboration network between the bio-NMR and the e-infrastructure scientific communities; ii) assess the state-of-the-art of the computational aspects of bio-NMR; iii) implement and make available state-of-the-art computational methods. A broad range of networking activities will focus on monitoring, dissemination and outreach, training, and hands-on workshops. The development and enforcement of operational and organizational schemes and policies will also be addressed.

Partnership scientific highlights

► NMR experiments carried out by Partner 2 (Sattler) have contributed to the discovery that the splicing factor SPF45 regulates alternative splicing of the apoptosis regulatory gene FAS (CD95). The SPF45 U2AF-homology motif (UHM), which mediates protein-protein interactions between factors involved in constitutive RNA splicing, is necessary for this activity and binds UHM-ligand motifs (ULMs) present in the 3' splice site-recognizing factors U2AF65, SF1 and SF3b155. The authors describe a 2.1 A crystal structure of SPF45-UHM in complex with a ULM peptide from SP3b155. NMR experiments suggest some conformational changes of the UHM upon ULM binding. Their data imply that networks of UHM-ULM interactions are involved in regulating alternative splicing.(Nat Struc Mol Biol, July 2007)

► Partners 1 (Bertini) and 3 (Boelens) have shown that the proper assembly and function of cytochrome c oxidase depend on correct copper delivery and incorporation. Complex models along this pathway were gained by combining bioinformatics interface predictions with information-driven docking. (J Proteome Res, April 2007)

► Partner 8 (Sklenar) has presented a set of 2D experiments that utilize direct (13)C detection to provide proton-carbon, carbon-carbon and carbon-nitrogen correlations in the bases of nucleic acids. The experiments supply accurate values of (13)C and (15)N chemical shifts and carbon-carbon and carbon-nitrogen coupling constants. These values can help to reveal structural features of nucleic acids either directly or via induced changes when the sample is dissolved in oriented media. (J Biomol NMR, October 2007)