Nordic course on macromolecular X-ray, neutron and electron diffraction

The aim of the course is to provide an introduction on the experimental and computational methods of X-ray, electron, and neutron diffraction as well as data management in protein crystallography for PhD students and postdocs whose research project focuses on solving protein structures using crystallography. The course starts with an online presession to introduce the data management and crystal shipment to synchrotron using Icebear (Research Data Management for Structural Biology software) and is followed by onsite lectures addressing principles, differences and the application of crystallography using X-rays, neutrons, and electrons. Tutorials include data processing, structure determination using molecular replacement and crystallographic data management. Participants of the course have the possibility to collect X-ray diffraction data remotely at MAX IV during the course using their own crystals.

The course is hosted by the Faculty of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine (FBMM) and Biocenter Oulu and supported by MAX IV Laboratory, Collaborative Computational Project 4 (CCP4) and the Health and Biosciences Doctoral Programme of the University of Oulu.

There is no registration fee. Applications for the course can be submitted on a rolling basis until October 6th or until all the places are filled via application form. Please also indicate if you plan to send crystals. If your application is accepted, you will also need to register for the course in Peppi.

Confirmed teachers:

Subhadra Dalwani (University of Oulu, Finland)

Edward Daniel (University of Oulu, Finland)

Ana Gonzalez (Max IV Laboratory, Lund)

Tim Grüne (University of Vienna, Austria)

Kristian Koski (University of Oulu)

Andrey Lebedev (CCP4, UK)

David Waterman (CCP4, UK)

Overall preliminary program:

Oct 13

13:00 – 16:00 Remote training in data management and sample shipment

Oct 21

09:00 – 11:00 X-ray, neutron and electron crystallography

11:00 – 12:00 Molecular replacement

13:00 – 14:00 Student presentations

14:00- 15:00 Introduction to diffraction data collection

15:00 – 17:00 Structure refinement in the cloud environment

Oct 22

09:00 – 10:00 Data processing with XDS

10:00 – 11:30 Data collection demonstration

12:30 – 17:00 Parallel sessions on student data collection, data management and data processing

Oct 23

09:00 – 11:00 Automated data processing pipelines

11:00 – 12:00 Analysis of data collection results

13:00 – 14:00 Recording and finding (meta)data

After the course

Possibility to continue data collection in the following weeks during a scheduled session.