The Southeast Collaboratory for Structural Genomics: a high-throughput gene to structure factory.

The Southeast Collaboratory for Structural Genomics consists of four working groups. The protein production group supplies/develops high-output production of Pyrococcus furiosus, Caenorhabditis elegans, and selected human proteins. The X-ray crystallography group conducts high-throughput structure production in parallel with production-related research/development in nanocrystallization robotics, capillary crystallization cassette, synchrotron/home X-ray instrumentation, sample mounting robotics, data processing and pipelined structure analysis, combined refinement/validation protocols, and direct use of unlabeled native crystals (Direct Crystallography). The NMR group emphasizes/develops sample screening and backbone structure determination from residual dipolar coupling data. The bioinformatics group implements/develops local database interfaces, pipelined sequence/structure information search/updates, and database/bioinformatics toolkits.