Collaborative Computational Project No. 4
Software for Macromolecular X-Ray Crystallography

CCP4/APS School in Macromolecular Crystallography: From data collection to structure refinement and beyond

School Announcement

We are very pleased to announce the 9th annual CCP4 USA Crystallography School organized jointly with the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and National Cancer Institute Structural Biology Facility at the Advanced Photon Source (GM/CA@APS). The 2016 school will take place at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) synchrotron site at Argonne National Laboratory, near Chicago.

School Dates

June 21 - June 29, 2016
The first two days will be dedicated to data collection and processing. The rest of the school will focus on structure solution, refinement and validation.

School Details

Purpose of the course and intended audience

The course is intended mainly for graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and young scientists, along with commercial/industrial researchers in the area of structural biology from all across the globe. The school is not meant as an introductory level course to protein crystallography. It is designed more for applicants with reasonable expertise in crystallography and experience with the CCP4 suite. The purpose of the school is to address specific problems that the applicants face while collecting diffraction data and while solving and refining novel structures. Applicants with crystals for data collection or with already collected data will be given strong consideration, although these are not mandatory requirements.

Several of the leading PX software developers from around the world will present lectures and tutorials on their software and will also be available to help with problems during hands-on sessions of the school.

Data Collection Workshop

The course will again be combined with a data collection workshop at the macromolecular crystallography beamlines 23ID-B and 23ID-D of the General Medicine and Cancer Institute Collaborative Access Team (GM/CA@APS) at the Advanced Photon Source (APS). This proved to be highly successful and popular with students of past workshops.

Participants will be encouraged to bring their crystals for data collection. However, the workshop beamtime cannot be used for crystal screening. Only samples with proven diffraction will be accepted. Limited screening may be allowed after all participants with well characterized crystals have completed data collection.

Some of the leading experts in the field will discuss strategies of data collection. GM/CA@APS staff will guide participants in beamline usage and will help during data collection.

Current capabilities of the beamlines, training courses and other details of GM/CA@APS can be found at www.gmca.anl.gov

Data Processing and Structure Solution Workshop

The aim of this workshop will be to cover all aspects of the structure solution process in macromolecular crystallography, starting from data processing, through phasing and refinement, and ending with validation and deposition.

The workshop will cover many popular programs used for data processing and structure solution with the software developers available to help throughout the week. Programs covered will include: Mosflm, Scala, HKL3000, XDS, Refmac, ARP/WARP, PHENIX, Phaser, Coot, Crank, SHELXC/D/E, BALBES, MrBUMP, Buccaneer and many more.

Fees

Fees apply for participation in the school but are only taken after the application process has completed and students have been selected. The registration fees for the selected participants is $400 for academics and $950 for industrials. The link for the on-line payments and instructions will be provided once the selection process is completed. The students will be responsible for their transportation and lodging. The workshop organizers can assist in making the reservations at economical lodging at the Argonne Guest House. The workshop will cover all other expenses.

Previous Schools

A list of publications arising from past schools is available from here.

Links to the webpages for previous CCP4/APS schools.