The NIH Roadmap Initiative was created to focus on critically important and challenging areas of biomedical importance that were not being adequately addressed, due in part to a lack of non-hypothesis driven funding and a lack of suitable methods and new technologies. Since membrane proteins play such a critical role in so many cellular and physiological processes and membrane proteins are so difficult to express, solubilize and purify, the production of membrane proteins was identified as a serious roadblock to understanding their structure and function and chosen as one of the top Roadmap Initiatives. The first phase of the Structural Biology Roadmap Initiative focused on creating Centers for Innovation in Membrane Protein Production. Two Centers one at University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) and the other at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) were funded and established in 2004. Because innovation was not the exclusive domain of these centers, a second and third initiative requested P01, R21 & R01s and more recently, additional R01 applications, focused on novel approaches to obtaining intact and active membrane proteins for structural studies. To date, 20 grants have been funded through this mechanism. Because of the potentially valuable information that could be generated and shared, NIH staff decided that there should be an annual Inter-Center meeting between the Centers. The first Inter-Center meeting, hosted by Bob Stroud at UCSF in May, 2006, was very successful and the consensus among the center directors and NIH program directors was that all investigators funded through the Structural Biology Roadmap Initiative should be included and invited to the next annual meeting. This proposal requests funds to establish an expanded NIH Roadmap meeting to include all funded Roadmap investigators, with the first extended meeting to be held at TSRI November 1-2, 2007. The meeting will provide a unique opportunity for members of the two Roadmap membrane protein centers as well as those from projects funded through the RFA Membrane Protein Production and Structure Determination (RFA-RM-04-026 and RFA-RM-07-003) to discuss the current status of their projects (Table 1). Presentation and discussion will deal with progress as well as barriers to progress that could transform membrane protein structure determination processes to produce results comparable to that now seen in studies of soluble proteins. The organizers view the meeting as a possible catalyst for the start of fruitful collaborations among conference participants and will encourage their formation. Three to four leading experts in the field will also be invited to help further catalyze the discussions and disseminate the technologies. Plans also include the publication of the proceedings of the meeting in a high-impact structural biology journal thus providing a wide distribution of the discussions and results presented in the meeting. This proposal requests funds to establish an expanded NIH Roadmap meeting to include all funded Roadmap investigators, with the first extended meeting to be held at TSRI November 1-2, 2007. The meeting will provide a unique opportunity for members of the two Roadmap membrane protein centers as well as those from projects funded through the RFA Membrane Protein Production and Structure Determination (RFA-RM-04-026 and RFA-RM-07-003) to discuss the current status of their projects (Table 1). Presentation and discussion will deal with progress as well as barriers to progress that could transform membrane protein structure determination processes to produce results comparable to that now seen in studies of soluble proteins. ? ? ?
