Development of integrated structural biology at the Grenoble and European scale
The
new challenge in structural biology is to understand biological
processes at the molecular level in a cellular context (or even
broader). To accomplish this, integrated structural biology is based on a
collection of high-tech experimental approaches, and requires equipment
(synchrotron radiation, high-field NMR, cryo-electron tomography) that
is sometimes expensive. This also involves multidisciplinary expertise
(biology, physics, chemistry) ranging from the production of samples to
their characterization (structure, assembly and architecture, dynamics,
function, interactions, etc.). Thanks to the presence of large
equipment, Grenoble pioneered these approaches and established the PSB
(Partnership for Structural Biology) as early as 2002, linking the ESRF,
ILL, EMBL and IBS research teams; more recently, they have been joined
by teams from the UVHCI [1]. This first step has made possible the
pooling of resources, and new concerted developments.
In
general, it is now accepted that this type of biology requires a
collection of facilities corresponding to the equivalent of large
instruments. The aim of the European initiative ESFRI is to establish
such infrastructures. Within this context, the project Instruct
(Integrating Structural Biology), which began in 2011, defines 15
reference centers for integrated structural biology in Europe and 5
affiliated centers. Grenoble, and more specifically the combination of
the two French units of the PSB (IBS and UVHCI), represents one of the
major reference centers for Instruct.
The project FRISBI (French
Infrastructure for Integrated Structural Biology), comprised of the two
French Instruct centers (Grenoble and Strasbourg) as well as three
other nationally important structural biology centers, was selected as
part of the program “Investissement d’Avenir”. Grenoble has thus
received 11.2 million € to support major improvements in most of the PSB
facilities, notably including the purchase of new NMR spectrometers and
electron microscopes
The missions of the new UMS
PSB’s
mode of concerted decision making, sufficient for a local pooling of
facilities, needed to be formalized to meet the needs of the scientific
community. The boundaries of the facilities, associated personnel, modes
of operation and types of services for each facility, as well as access
conditions (selection of projects, costs, management, etc.) have been
specified for the different users. All technological facilities from the
IBS thus obtained in July 2011 the ISO 9001 certification for their
activities in production and purification of proteins, the
characterization of their structure and biophysical properties, dynamics
and assembly by X-ray, NMR and microscopy.
Darren
Hart (EMBL) has been appointed director of the new Unité Mixte de
Service, and is assisted by Yvette Gaude in financial administration.
The governance of the UMS will involve the management of IBS and UVHCI
within a local steering committee. The vast majority of scientific and
technical personnel working at the facilities will keep their
affiliation with the IBS and UVHCI research teams, to allow the best
possible interaction between facility and research. The equipment
present on the day of the creation of the UMS will thus evolve according
to the needs of scientific projects and the UMS will ensure the
sustained operation of the facilities by guaranteeing optimum access to
all types of users.
[1] European Synchrotron Radiation
Facility (ESRF), Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), European Molecular
Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Institut de Biologie Structurale (IBS), Unit
of Virus Host Cell Interactions (UVHCI)