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

欧佩拉，斯坦利·J·MCB-0003850该奖项为第七届核磁共振分子生物学前沿会议提供部分支持。核磁共振在确定大分子结构和研究蛋白质和核酸动力学方面发挥着越来越重要的作用。核磁共振在结构生物学中日益增长的重要性从过去几年这种技术确定的生物大分子的新结构的数量上得到了有力的证明，每年大约有250个新的核磁共振结构存放在PDB中。但核磁共振不仅是一种确定结构的技术，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。一个主要的研究目标是增加可用核磁共振分析的蛋白质或大分子复合体的大小。这就需要开发更高场的光谱仪，这将产生更高的灵敏度和更好的分辨率，从而提高所有尺寸的结构的质量。与这些工具的发展携手并进的，将是克服或尽量减少相关时间问题的方法方法。尽管取得了重大进展，但核磁共振数据收集在实时和设备时间上仍是一项重大投资，一个结构可能需要几个月的时间。增加核磁共振结构数量的途径是通过高通量方法或简化实验来寻找的。核磁共振是为数不多的能够提供部分折叠和非均相蛋白质系统的结构和动力学数据的技术之一，即淀粉样蛋白。对它们的研究将对病理学和疾病产生重大影响。这次会议将是展示重要蛋白质、核酸及其复合体的最新结构的论坛，阐明分子生物学中的关键功能问题。方法论和功能性讨论将得到同等重视。该奖项将有助于支持研究生和博士后研究员的参与。

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.