"2nd 3D Repertoire Annual Meeting - Doors Open Day"

3D REPERTOIRE PROJECT

In the last two decades biological science has made huge progress in many areas. We live in an era when the entire genetic code of many organisms has been established. However, to make full use of this treasure of information, we need to bring it together with the knowledge of what the products of all these genes, the proteins, are doing. At present, even though we appear to have a vast amount of information at our disposal, it would be unreasonable to expect that in the near or medium term we could reach this level of understanding for an entire cell. So, a pre-requisite for this goal is comprehensive knowledge of the biological functions of the complete set of genes and proteins within a genome (post-genomic biology).

Introduction

Proteins rarely act alone: they typically interact with other macromolecules to perform particular cellular tasks. The resulting functional assemblies (complexes) achieve more than the sum of their parts and these complexes have functions that cannot easily understood by even the most systematic analyses of individual proteins. So, the discovery and analysis of particular cellular protein complexes under physiological conditions provides key insights into their function and takes characterisation of cellular systems well beyond the limits of other experiments. Prominent examples include the ribosome, the chaperonin GroEl/GroEs, the spliceosome, the cyclosome, the proteasome, the nuclear pore complex and the synaptosome. Analyses of results from genome-scale interaction experiments in yeast show a clear tendency for many yeast assemblies to mirror their equivalents in animals, including the model organisms and man. Complexes essential for normal cell activitiy overlap significantly and represent the building blocks of a Eukaryotic core proteome, covering basic cellular function. More importantly, those conserved between yeast and man contribute significantly to the understanding of multifactor diseases, particularly those related to key cellular processes. Elucidation of three-dimensional (3D) structures for protein complexes will open new avenues to unravel the molecular pathology and physiology of human diseases, leading to rational, target-oriented therapeutic approaches. Moreover developments in 3D tomography show that it will soon be possible to fit such structures into a whole cell tomogram. This will be a great leap for systems biology, since it will place complexes in their precise cellular context and provide critical concentration information essential for the quantitative understanding of a living cell. However, without the individual complexes, it will be exceedingly difficult to understand such whole cell images.

3D-Repertoire is an integrated project funded by the European Commission under Framework 6. It brings together scientists from 14 institutions and private companies, in seven countries across Europe, with the aim to resolve structures for all amenable protein complexes from budding yeast (or where necessary equivalents from other species) at the best possible resolution by electron microscopy, X-ray crystallography and in silico approximations. The team of top scientists formed through 3D-Repertoire covers the wide range of expertise needed for such an ambitious undertaking and we have secured access to the yeast constructions used to do the complete pull-down study of complexes in Yeast (given to Euroscarf by Cellzome).

Registration: Free and on-line by clicking on the link to the right of this text.

Registration Deadline: 13th February 2007.

For further information about the meeting, please contact: Blanka Wysocka by e-mail blanka.wysocka@crg.es or by phone +34933160145.

For further information about 3D Repertoire Project, please visit the website: www.3drepertoire.org