On 7th of October, it was time again for the Open Day at Science Park in Amsterdam! From noon on, there were many visitors, especially parents with their children, who were enthusiastic to learn about the different facets of science.
Like last year, we were organising the “Kristalfabriek” to introduce visitors to the enormous use but also to the undeniable aesthetics of protein crystallography. Our guests could grow their own protein crystals in just 15 min. and stain them with a blue dye to determine if they were real protein crystals. On a big screen but also through the microscope, the experimenters could marvel at their work. It was an exciting day and I hope that we succeeded in directing more attention to the value of crystallography and structural biology!
De KU Leuven maakt ons kenbaar dat er een vacature open staat voor een expert X-stralendiffractie: “X-stralendiffractie is onontbeerlijk voor tal van onderzoekslijnen over de afdelingen heen. Toestellen voor de kristalstructuurbepaling van enkelkristallen en poeders (XRD) zijn beschikbaar, naast gespecialiseerde apparatuur voor gecombineerde grote (WAXS) en kleine hoek (SAXS) X-stralen verstrooiing aan hiërarchisch geordende materialen. Daarnaast maken onze onderzoekers gebruik van synchrotron X-stralen aan grote internationale instellingen zoals de European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF). Zo zijn onderzoekers van het departement Chemie verantwoordelijk voor de werking van twee Vlaamse bundellijnen aan het ESRF: een bundellijn voor gecombineerde SAXS/WAXS en een bundellijn voor X-stralen spectroscopie (XANES, EXAFS, X-stralen fluorescentie). Om het potentieel van deze technieken optimaal te benutten zijn we op zoek naar een expert X-stralendiffractie.”
Solliciteren voor deze vacature kan tot en met 26/10/2023. Meer informatie vindt u op de website van de universiteit Leuven.
The triannual IUCr congress was held this time 22-29 August, 2023 in Australia, a long-distance travel for most crystallographers. The number of attendees was a bit lower than usual (~1800) but still respectable. This year the 75th Anniversary of the IUCr is celebrated. A very well attended session was devoted to short talks by several Executive committee members and IUCr officers giving their memories on the rich history of the IUCr.
13th Ewald Prize Lecture went to Wayne A. Hendrickson who delivered his lecture “Facing the Phase problem”. In his work he contributed to solving the phase problem for protein crystal structures with MAD and SAD techniques. He also mentioned the importance of the work of Prof. Bijvoet on anomalous scattering, our founding father of crystallography in the Netherlands. There were three plenary lectures, 29 key notes lectures and 8 parallel micro symposia, twice per day. In addition, there were poster sessions and the Software Fayre (organized by Martin Lutz) was running each day. One of the keynote lectures was given by our member Elias Vlieg (RU Nijmegen) on “X-ray crystallography of solid-liquid interfaces”. He showed very interesting phenomena are going on at crystal surfaces that can be well studied with X-ray crystallography. Elias is president of the DAGG, the Dutch Association of Crystal Growth, and I am happy to let you know that next year we will have a joint NVK-DAGG meeting!
The delegates were no longer provided with program and abstracts on paper; they were accessible through a congress app. Although quite handy to not be dragging around a heavy bag, it was very hard to really get a good overview of what was going on each day. The conference center was huge. When I arrived the first day and entered the front door, it turned out I had to walk another 1 km inside the building to arrive at the reception desk. It was very pleasant to meet colleagues in real life, talk to them over coffee and have lively discussions. It is a relive after having had the Corona restrictions. The exhibition was not as large as usual, surely because of the costs involved in traveling and exporting material to Australia. However, happily, a good number of sponsors were present anyway; I find the exhibitions are always the heart of the meeting. There was also a cute fluffy guest that could be petted.
An impression of Melbourne
The fluffy guest
Martin Lutz and I were the Dutch National Committee representatives to the General Assembly and we had three long evenings discussing withdrawal of adhering bodies (mostly for financial reasons), voting for nominations of commission members and notably the admission of The African Crystallographic Association (AfCA) as a Regional Associate of the International Union of Crystallography. There was also a report about the achievements of the various IUCr journals, a very important source of income for the IUCr. The next IUCr meeting will be in Calgary in 2026 and it was decided that the 28th IUCr congress will be held in Berlin in 2029.
The winters in Melbourne are not that bad, just like a poor summer in the Netherlands, so it was nice to walk back and forth to the conference center which was located on a relaxed pedestrian area with cafés and restaurants close to the Yarra river. All in all, I found the very long traveling time was worth the effort!
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Henk Schenk on September 14th, 2023. Prof. Dr. Hendrik (Henk) Schenk was one of the founders, the first Chair and “erelid” (honorary member) of the NVK. Henk was a inspiring crystallographer, who will be remembered by many of us. Our thoughts are with his family.
The Ivano Bertini Award is presented every two years at the Instruct Biennial Structural Biology Conference. It recognizes researchers who have undertaken frontier research utilizing an integrative structural biology approach which aligns with the Instruct vision. The deadline is 30 September 2023, you can find out more and submit your nomination for the award here.
14th Internship Call
Instruct-ERIC offers funded internship opportunities for early career researchers to access an Instruct center for 3 to 6 months. The program provides an opportunity for PhD students and early stage postdoctoral fellows to train in a variety of techniques in a new facility, with a new team, in a new country! Find out more and apply here before the 2 October, 2023 deadline.
Recently Sandra Eltschkner (one of our young members) published her work she performed during her postdoc in the lab of Helena Westerdahl at Lund University, Sweden. Sandra is very happy to introduce the topic to you herself:
“We recently published the first structure of a Major Histocompatibility complex class I (MHC I) from a wild songbird, the Great reed warbler, in complex with different peptide antigens. The Great reed warbler is a long-distance migratory bird that winters in Sub-Saharan Africa and breeds in the Western Palearctic (which includes Europe) in summer. Migratory birds encounter a variety of different pathogens at their breeding, stop-over and wintering sites, and hence their immune system needs to be especially well adapted. MHC-I molecules are central to the adaptive immune system in vertebrates, since they present antigens to CD8 + T-cells, thus enabling the detection of intracellular pathogens. Our structures reveal an unusual conformation of pathogen-derived antigens (peptides) in the peptide-binding groove of the MHC I molecule of the Great reed warbler and provide a first step towards understanding the extraordinary immune adaptation capacity of migratory birds.”
The paper is entitled The structure of songbird MHC class I reveals antigen binding that is flexible at the N-terminus and static at the C-terminus, is published in Frontiers Immunology and can be found through this link (reference: doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2023.1209059). The presented X-ray structures from the proteins presented in this paper can be found in the Protein Data Bank with accession codes 7ZQI and 7ZQJ.
Do you want to meet Sandra? She will be running the “Kristalfabriek” at the Open Day at Amsterdam Science Park on 7th of October. You will get the change to crystallise Lysozyme and look at your self-made crystals.
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Raimond Ravelli. It is a shock to everyone who knew him as a very enthusiastic and energetic scientist and person.
Mid April of this year he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Chemotherapy did not slow down the progress and on June 30th Raimond passed away at the age of 55. Raimond will be dearly missed by many colleagues and friends but most of all by his family, his wife Maaike and his children Seppe and Noé. Our thoughts are with them.
Lately we have noticed that two of our members have something to celebrate!
Daan Swarts has received a NWO Vidi grant for continuing his work on the origin and evolution of RNA silencing pathways. We are looking forward to exciting science that will be funded by this grant. Congratulations, we are looking forward to the science to come! In case young scientist are interested in contributing to this work, according to Twitter positions will open soon.
Also, we congratulate Anastassis (Tassos) Perrakis, who has been elected as a member of EMBO joining leading researchers in the field of life sciences in Europe and beyond.
Here it is, our newsletter! In this edition we highlight the lab of our member Daan Swarts, who became an EMBO young investigator recently. Additionally, you can read about the first NVK young researchers retreat and Bram, our treasurer, introduces himself.
We recommend you to take a proper seat, enjoy the sun, have a read through the newsletter and enjoy the summer!
