Conference on Frontiers of NMR in Molecular Biology VII to be held on Jan. 21-26, 2000 in Big Sky, Montana

mcb -0003850该奖项为第七届分子生物学核磁共振前沿Keystone会议提供部分支持。核磁共振在大分子结构的测定、蛋白质和核酸动力学的研究中发挥着越来越重要的作用。在过去的几年中，通过该技术确定的生物大分子的新结构的数量有力地说明了核磁共振在结构生物学中日益增长的重要性，每年大约有250个新的核磁共振结构沉积在PDB中。但核磁共振不仅仅是一种结构测定技术；它还能够提供丰富的信息，这是对结构数据的补充。关于蛋白质和核酸的动力学和溶剂化的核磁共振数据以及部分折叠或未折叠的蛋白质和多肽状态的核磁共振表征正在变得可用。一个主要的研究目标是增加可以通过核磁共振分析的蛋白质或大分子复合物的大小。这就要求开发更高场的光谱仪，它将产生更高的灵敏度和更好的分辨率，从而提高各种尺寸结构的质量。与这些仪器发展携手并进的将是克服或最小化相关时间问题的方法学方法。尽管取得了重大进展，但核磁共振数据收集仍然需要大量的实时投资和设备时间，一个结构可能需要几个月的时间。通过高思想性的方法或简化实验来寻求增加核磁共振结构数量的途径。核磁共振是为数不多的能够提供部分折叠和异质蛋白质系统（即淀粉样蛋白）结构和动力学数据的技术之一。对这些的研究将对病理学和疾病产生重大影响。会议将是展示重要蛋白质、核酸及其复合物的最新结构的论坛，阐明分子生物学中的关键功能问题。方法和功能的讨论将给予同等的重视。该奖项将有助于支持研究生和博士后的参与。

Opella, Stanley J.MCB-0003850This award provides partial support for the VIIth Keystone Conference on Frontiers of NMR in Molecular Biology. NMR is playing an increasingly important role in the determination of macromolecular structures and the study of protein and nucleic acid dynamics. This growing importance of NMR in structural biology is powerfully illustrated by the number of novel structures of biological macromolecules determined by this technique over the last few years with approximately 250 new NMR structures deposited in the PDB each year. But NMR is not only a technique for structure determination; it is also able to provide a wealth of information, which is complementary to the structural data. NMR data on dynamics and solvation of proteins and nucleic acids is becoming available as well as NMR characterization of partially folded or unfolded protein and polypeptide states.A major research goal is to increase the size of the protein or macromolecular complex that can be analyzed by NMR. This requires the development of even higher-field spectrometers, which will yield higher sensitivity and better resolution, thereby improving the quality of structures of all sizes. Hand in hand with these instrument developments will be methodological approaches to overcome or minimize the correlation time problem. Despite major advances, NMR data collection still represents a substantial investment in real time and in equipment time and may require several months for one structure. Avenues for increasing the number of NMR structures are sought through high thoughtput approaches or streamlining experiments. NMR is one of very few techniques which will be able to provide structural and dynamical data on partially folded and heterogeneous protein systems, i.e., amyloids. Studies on these will have major implications for pathology and disease.The meeting will be the forum to present the newest structures of important proteins, nucleic acids and complexes thereof, illuminating key functional questions in molecular biology. Methodological and functional discussions will be given equal weight. This award will help to support the participation of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.