Breaking Down the Barriers in Structural Biology into Defined, Measurable and Solvable Problems

Structural biology is entering a new era. Not just the virus and biomedicine, not just astounding breakthroughs in prediction, but new and complimentary approaches are exploding onto the scene. It is time to imagine what could be achieved if there were no barriers to structural information, and to contemplate how we will combine our diverse strengths to overcome obstacles we always believed were insurmountable. An excellent place to start is crystallization, where the impact of any improvement would be very high, but predictive theory remains elusive. Preparation of electron microscopy grids faces a similar challenge. Each session will focus on a critical barrier in structural biology, and the goal will be formulating the best advice to newcomers to the field who will face these challenges. Where possible, test data with a clear scoring system will be defined, and friendly competition between proponents of different approaches will be encouraged. Current best practices will be described, evaluated and compared and the relative effectiveness of alternative approaches will be announced at the meeting. Open discussion is expected to uncover new insights, new approaches, new algorithms, and no doubt flaws in the tests. By the end of the meeting we will have established not only new best practices, but also improved the criteria we use to assess them.