29th Mid-Atlantic Protein Workshop
The Mid-Atlantic was held in April this year, which can be risky in the Rockville area, but fortunately sunny weather prevailed. The workshop was organized by Gary Gilliland, Osnat Herzberg and Travis Gallagher. Fourteen corporate sponsors underwrote the meeting expenses, many of them also presenting their latest products and tools. About 150 registrants from the Mid-Atlanic region attended.


Travis Gallagher
Meeting Organizer

This year's workshop began on a Wednesday afternoon and ended Friday midday. Wednesday's keynote lecture by Alasdair Steven of NIH, "Cryo-electron microscopy plus X-ray crystallography: A hybrid approach to visualizing macromolecular interactions and transitions", set the tone for the gathering, in which many structures were described at high resolution, still leaving questions regarding larger biological interactions. Microscopy and other techniques capable of showing large multimolecular assemblies seemed to be one direction in which research is heading. Another clear trend was towards synchrotrons and MAD phasing, usually with selenium. The keynote lecture was followed by dinner by the pond, and a lively poster session.

Meeting Organizer Osnat Herzberg and Keynote speaker Alasdair Steven of NIH

In the first of Thursday's sessions, Millie Georgiadis of Rutgers presented several DNA complexes of the Maloney murine leukemia virus reverse transciptase, and Graeme Conn of JHU showed ribosomal protein L11 complexed with a 58-base conserved RNA domain. The T4 gene 59 replication fork binding protein was then presented by Timothy Mueser of NIAMS. The session concluded with two viral integrase structures: Rous sarcoma integrase described by Zhongning Yang of NIAMS and the ASV integrase catalytic core presented by Jacek Lubkowski of NCI. The second session began with Xinhua Ji of NCI, who discussed Hg-MAD phasing. Osnat Herzberg described CARB's structural genomics program and a recent structure emerging from it. The problems of membrane protein crystallography were addressed by Michael Wiener of UVa, and the session ended with Pam Focia of UNC, Chapel Hill surveying the HPRT active site for mechanism and inhibitor discovery.

Meeting Organizer Gary Gilland and happy attendee David Davies (NIH)
After a hearty lunch, enzymes provided the topic of the third session. Jaroslaw Blazczyk of NCI described substrate-induced conformational change in guanylate kinase, followed by a description of Rab geranylgeranyl transferase from Hong Zhang of CARB. Jia Li of UVa presented her work on TEII, an E. coli homologue of the HIV Nef-binding thioesterase. Creatine kinase was the focus of Mohana Rao's talk (from NCI), and Changill Ban of NIDDK discussed the ATPase activity of the MutL protein. The session ended with Menachem Shoham of Case Western Reserve reporting on the ribozome-attacking cytotoxin colicin E3. After a coffee break, the immunity protein to colicin E3 was described by Chunmin Li (also of Case Western), followed by Peter Sun of NIAID, who taught us about the HLA-CW3 specific killer cell receptor and its implications for receptor activation. Andreas Hofmann of NCI showed the first crystal structure of a plant annexin, Anx24(Ca32). A membrane-targeting module called FYVE was described by Saurav Misra of NIDDK, and Elizabeth Reisinger of JHU presented Tup1, a corepressor of transcription. Kenton Longenecker of UVa described the complex of RhoGDI and RhoA*GDP. The final talk of the day was given by Fan Yang of NCI, concerning domain swapping in the HIV-inactivating protein cyanovirin-N. After the sessions, a delicious dinner was served by Rockville's Bombay Bistro and the posters and exhibitor's wares were further reviewed.

Amy Swain, Hoffman
LaRoche, discussing the various presentation with a fellow attendee

On Friday there were three in-depth lectures/demonstrations on the topic of "High-Throughput Structure Determination". Paul Adams discussed the many-faceted capabilities of the program CNS (Crystallography and NMR System), Helen Berman gave an update on the Protein Data Bank and its transition from Brookhaven to the Research

Jerry Alexandratos (NCI) pointing out the highlights in his poster

Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics (RCSB), and Li-Wei Hung reviewed the methods and power of the MAD structure-determination program SOLVE. Before departure, the question of where to convene next year was discussed. There seemed to be a consensus for holding the millenial gathering in a new and different place, possibly away from our usual campuses and laboratories. It's sure to be good, so stay tuned.
Travis Gallagher

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