The CCP4/EM practical course will be held in Nové Hrady, South Bohemia, on 18-20 March 2025 right before the conference XXI Discussions. The whole program takes place at the castle Nový Zámek.
The course is intended mainly (but not only) for MSc and PhD students who are interested in the field of structural biology. They will receive a basic theoretical introduction into crystallography, Cryo-EM and SAXS and then will be learn how to master the software tools of CCP4 and CCPEM packages (and more).
REGISTRATION
Please register HERE and send a brief (1/2 page is enough) professional CV and a short motivation letter via email to duskovaj@ibt.cas.cz. You should specify your role/interest in the field especially in respect to the particular techniques covered by the course. We will respect the basic principles of offering equal opportunities with regard to gender, disability or ethnicity when selecting participants.
In you motivation letter, briefly comment on the following points:
- What is your status? (Student, post-doc, other – explain)
- What is your main motivation to register to this course?
- What is your level of experience with the subjects of the course (crystallography, CryoEM, SAXS, 1-5, 5 = expert)?
- What is the connection between the course subjects and your current/planned project?
- Tell us a few words about your current project/thesis or activities planned in the near future. This information serves solely for the tutors to prepare for the course, none of it would be shared beyond the team of organizers.
Registration deadline: 3rd February 2025
Preliminary program
Introduction to crystallography
An introductory lesson on macromolecular crystallography and cryogenic electron microscopy with focus on principles and the most common approaches will provide basics and for some fill in the gaps they would need for their practice.
Macromolecular Crystallographic structure solution using CCP4
This section will teach students how to use the CCP4 suite to determine a structure from X-ray diffraction image data. The web-based graphical user interface, CCP4Cloud will be used to interact with the software and manage the structure determination project.
Participants will learn how to perform image processing using the DIALS package to integrate, scale and merge the reflection measurements from the diffraction images. This will be followed by learning how to make use of Alphafold predicted models to solve the phase problem and produce an initial electron density map for the crystal structure. Subsequent to this, students will learn how to use model building and refinement tools to build and improve a molecular model to fit with the experimental observations. This will include validating the chemistry of the structure and how to fit and refine ligands.
Single particle analysis data interpretation using CCP-EM
The workshop will provide a hands-on introduction to the use of the Relion Image Processing application to perform single particle Cryo-EM reconstruction. It will also cover the use of the CCP-EM suite to perform all the stages involved in building and refining a structure to fit the resulting Cryo-EM map. No previous experience is required, and participants are welcome and encouraged to bring their own data sets.
Provision of updated reference material
Most of the teaching documentation, example data, and data processing examples will be made available to the course participants via electronic means (dedicated, password-protected cloud repository of course materials). Exceptions will be limited only to examples of unpublished data of the invited/presenting speakers.
Registration Fee
Student/course participant 2500 CZK
The fee covers participation in the whole program, accommodation for two nights and full board (including breakfasts, lunches, dinners and coffee breaks).
The first meal is lunch on Tuesday and the last meal is lunch on Thursday.
The course is organized jointly by
Collaborative Computational Project no. 4
Collaborative Computational Project for Electron cryo-Microscopy
Czech Society for Structural Biology
Czech Infrastructure for Integrative Structural Biology
Institute of Biotechnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
Jarmila Dušková, Jan Stránský, Petr Kolenko, Ronan Keegan and Jan Dohnálek