First note to SG community
July 12, 2001
Dear International Structural Genomics Community:
As most of you will already know, at the conclusion of the Airlie House
meeting on international cooperation in structural genomics on April 6 of
this year, the participants voted to approve the three of us as an
executive committee with a charge of leading the efforts in international
cooperation for the next year. We were also given the option of recruiting
additional people to help us out in this important endeavor. We are very
pleased to be joined by Guy Montelione, Guy Dodson, Chris Sander, Dino
Moras, David Stuart, Joel Sussman, Wayne Hendrickson, John Norvell,
Barbara Skene, and Mitsuru Fujii, each of whom have agreed to serve on our
Advisory Board.
We are fortunate to have all the work by John Norvell, John Moult, and
Chris Sander and their Task Forces to begin with. We hope to build on this,
and our overall goals in the immediate future are to oversee the work of
the task forces, to begin planning for the 2002 Berlin meeting, and to
begin efforts to foster serious collaboration and exchange of technology
among structural genomics groups.
We have just begun thinking seriously more specifically about what we can
accomplish in the near future. This includes:
1. Communicating with the structural genomics community about our existence
and plans; including setting up a mailing list for efforts in structural
genomics cooperation.
2. Overseeing the work of the Task Forces, including requesting funding
necessary for them to accomplish their goals.
A. Task Force on "Deposition .." This task force is in the middle of
their work, and will require support for meetings to solidify nomenclature.
B. Task Force on "Publication.." This task force has completed its
mandate, we plan to request them to begin negotiations with journals to
create a smooth pathway for publishing short structure reports.
C. Task force on IP. This task force has completed its mandate, we
plan to request additional research on special use patents and drafts of
possible future, more specific statements.
D. Task force on "Numerical Criteria .." This task force has completed
its mandate.
E. Task force on Target Tracking. This task force in the middle of its
work, and may require some support for meetings in the next year.
3. Planning for the international meeting in Berlin, Oct, 2002 (Including a
session on structural genomics policies)
4. Promoting serious collaboration and sharing of technologies in
structural genomics
A. Setting up a simple program for personnel exchange between SG
laboratories
B. Setting up workshops for collaborative efforts and sharing of
technology
C. Generating funding for the personnel exchanges and workshops (NIH,
NSF, Wellcome Trust, OECD, MEXT, individual government funding agencies)
We have constructed a mailing list (news@isgo.org) for communication among
structural genomics efforts on issues of collaboration and sharing, and
have added the names of all those who attended the Avalon, Hinxton, ICSG2000 and Airlie meetings to it. If you do not wish to be on this list, you can easily
unsubscribe as described at the end of this message.
As it is useful to have a name to refer to our organization, we would like
to suggest that we use the name "International Structural Genomics
Organization." Comments on this are appreciated.
We will be looking forward to working with you and the entire international
structural genomics community to help foster cooperation and collaboration,
and would be pleased to hear your suggestions and comments. Please address
them to the general mailing list (news@isgo.org) if you wish everyone to
see them.
Best regards,
Udo Heinemann
Shigeyuki Yokoyama
Tom Terwilliger