The Instruct-ERIC Early Career Researcher (ECR) call offered additional access for researchers with 2-7 years of experience since completion of their PhD. A new programme in 2024, the ECR call provided up to €5,000 in consumable funding, plus a travel and accommodation budget of up to €1,000. This allows ECRs the flexibility to make the best use of the access provided through Instruct. Awardees are also eligible for up to three visits as part of their proposal, to further consolidate...
Instruct-CZ, the Czech Infrastructure for Integrative Structural Biology (CIISB), is formed by two Centers of Excellence for Structural Biology constructed within the projects CEITEC – Central European Institute of Technology, Brno and BIOCEV - Biotechnology and Biomedicine Centre, Vestec, Prague-West. Both facilities have made upgrades to their technologies in 2024, providing more advanced services for structural biology researchers. BIOCEV CF Diffraction Techniques have success...
The Instruct Centre FR2 in Grenoble has recently added to its fleet a powerful Titan Krios G4 cryo-electron microscope (Thermo Fisher Scientific), equipped with a cold FEG, a Selectris X energy filter and a Falcon 4i electron detector. Part of the EquipEx+ France Cryo-EM project, financed by the Plan Investissement d’Avenir 3, that has enabled the purchase of three state-of-the-art 300 kV cryo-TEMs in France, the Grenoble installation, designated CM02, will serve the French community and i...
Instruct-ERIC held a dedicated structural biology conference in Riga, Latvia, 3 December 2024. The “Structural Biology in Latvia and Beyond” conference celebrated the membership of Latvia in Instruct-ERIC, since their inclusion in 2019, allowing researchers in the country to receive funded access to high-end structural biology technologies across Europe. Opened by Prof. Kaspars Tars (Latvian Biomedical Research and Study Centre, LBMC), the symposium saw a combination of the latest ...
ELIXIR, the European life science data infrastructure, and Instruct-ERIC, the European research infrastructure for structural biology, have announced a strategic collaboration with the signing of a joint statement. Along with their shared objectives to support life science research, the organisations have in common 13 Member States and EMBL as partners, and have closely located headquarters. ELIXIR and Instruct agree to work together to: Improve the FAIRness (findability, accessibility, int...
Due to the upcoming holiday period, the next Instruct access panel will meet in the middle of January 2025. As a result, we recommend that any access proposals are submitted by 2 December to ensure that they are included in the panel discussion. Apply for Access Due to ever-growing demand for funded access to advanced structural biology technologies, Instruct now operates its access provision in regular panel reviews. Keep up to date with the proposal guidelines page to see w...
The 3rd AI4Life Call is now open, offering life scientists a unique opportunity to receive support for deep learning-enhanced image analysis. If you work with scientific imaging data and face challenges with your current analysis workflows, this final call is your chance to collaborate with AI4Life experts. Whether you're looking to improve your current workflows, get advice on training data, or learn about the best tools available for your work, AI imaing experts are here to help. What is off...
Instruct-ERIC is pleased to announce the awardees of the Fourth International Call – providing funded staff exchanges between European facilities and international partners! Researchers worldwide have access to structural biology services through Instruct at all times – the Instruct International Calls provide funding support for these visits, allowing researchers to travel to European facilities from institutions that hold a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Instruct, or vice ...
The 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry has been awarded to David Baker (University of Washington) for computational protein design, and the other half jointly to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper (Google DeepMind) for protein structure prediction. Computational tools and prediction software have become increasingly central to protein structure characterisation, and as such is key for integrated structural biology. Prof. Harald Schwalbe, Director of Instruct-ERIC, said, “The award of the Physi...
The Instruct-ERIC Annual Report 2023 has been published. Detailing the biggest events, project news, and services made available by Instruct-ERIC, the Annual Report provides a snapshot of Instruct’s activities throughout 2023. The report outlines the latest news, technologies, and science highlights from across the Instruct consortium, showcasing the offerings and expertise of each Instruct member. Particular highlights for Instruct include the addition of Greece and Slovenia as new mem...
ARIA (Access to Research Infrastructure Administration) was established by Instruct-ERIC to enhance the access proposal process, making it simpler for researchers to submit proposals and access integrated structural biology technologies and services. The ARIA development team continues to work hard to update and progress the system, whilst adapting it to the ever-changing needs of the global structural biology community, as well as a host of Horizon Europe projects. The latest release, 2.18 and...
The Instruct-ERIC review paper “The future of integrated structural biology” has been published in Structure, detailing the current status of structural biology technologies, as well as discussing potential future developments in the field. With input from a host of leading experts, both within the Instruct-ERIC consortium and out, the review examines the existing challenges in structural biology, and how short and long-term developments may have profound benefits for science as a w...
Instruct-ERIC offers support for structural biologists utilising AI prediction software and validation tools. The impact of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning on structural biology has grown exponentially in recent years. Particularly with the success of AlphaFold from Google DeepMind and EMBL-EBI, the power of these tools in predicting protein structures is as mesmerising as it is impactful. To help structural biologists get the best out of these tools, Instruct is providing support...
Since 2020, iNEXT-Discovery has provided access to many structural biology technologies across Europe. As of 31 July, the project came to an end, and no more proposals can be submitted. To continue receiving funded access to structural biology services, submit an application through Instruct-ERIC. Instruct provides access to more than 80 structural biology technologies, including sample preparation services, 3D structural techniques like Cryo-EM, NMR, and X-ray crystallography, plus biomolecul...
Instruct-ERIC is delighted to announce the awardees of the latest R&D funding calls. Recipients have been awarded funding for pilot research into technology and methods development for structural biology. Between 2013 and 2024, Instruct has provided R&D funding for more than 60 projects, being the catalyst for technical advancement and development in the field of structural biology. Instruct now offers funding for R&D projects through 2 different calls: R&D Pilot Award Schem...
The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in Germany is currently opening applications for a new Instruct-ERIC centre in Germany. Find out more and apply to include your institution here. The process is to nominate research institutions from Germany to Instruct-ERIC, which will act as part of a new Instruct centre and contribute research infrastructure capacities to Instruct-ERIC. The BMBF aims to have 3 to 4 German institutions participate as a decentralis...
In June, Krakow hosted a three-day workshop to advance the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). From the 10th to the 12th, invited stakeholders from across Europe gathered under the auspices of Work Package 15 (WP15), led by ACC Cyfronet AGH with support from the EGI Foundation as project coordinator. Workshop Focus and Goals EOSC Beyond WP15 collates requirements from pilot EOSC Nodes, devising service integration plans and facilitating co-design activities. Technical experts shape frameworks ...
During an incredibly period of 4.5 years iNEXT-Discovery provided their all kinds of services for structural biology training and access to thousands of researchers worldwide. Unfortunately all good things come to an end and July 31 2024 will mark its final day. At that point all iNEXT-Discovery activities will stop, and the consortium will write their final report to the European Commission who generously funded the project. Until then, some activities are still foreseen, and several of the i...
The Instruct-ERIC ARIA team has collaborated with the I2PC of CNB-CSIC in Madrid (part of Instruct-ES) to develop FandanGO, an innovative system to enhance data management and accessibility in structural biology. FandanGO has been formed as part of the Fragment-Screen project. Fragment-Screen aims to develop new techniques and workflows for fragment-based drug discovery (FBDD). Data management is a crucial aspect of FBDD given the significant amount of data, and the varying associated data and ...
The sixth Instruct Biennial Structural Biology Conference 2024 took place in the seaside town of Cascais, Portugal, welcoming more than 230 structural biology researchers to the leading integrated structural biology conference. The Instruct Biennial Structural Biology Conference 2024! The conference was formed around talks from several leading lights in the field of structural biology, each utilising a range of integrated techniques to conduct their research. This took attend...