Structural Genomics Consortium

The Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) is a not-for-profit organization formed in 2004 to determine the three dimensional structures of proteins of medical relevance, and place them in the Protein Data Bank without restriction. The SGC operates out of the Universities of Oxford and Toronto and Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm and is supported by funding from the Wellcome Trust, GSK, Novartis, Merck, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research and the Canadian, Ontario and Swedish governments. The SGC accounts for ~30% of the global output of new human protein structures each year, and ~50% of the annual global output of structures of proteins from human parasites. The SGC target proteins have relevance to human health and disease, such as diabetes, cancer and infectious diseases such as malaria.

The SGC is also spearheading an "open access" chemistry partnership - a new model for pre-competitive drug discovery in which the public and private sectors collaborate to generate potent and selective pharmacological inhibitors of human proteins that regulate epigenetic signalling, and commit to make these reagents available without restriction on use.

The SGC is headed by Aled Edwards (CEO/Director). Operations at each site are managed by a Chief Scientist - Cheryl Arrowsmith in Toronto, Canada; Chas Bountra in Oxford, UK and Johan Weigelt (Associate Director) in Stockholm, Sweden.

Highlight publications (2008–2009)

Barr AJ, Ugochukwu E, Lee WH, et al. (January 2009). "Large-scale structural analysis of the classical human protein tyrosine phosphatome". Cell 136 (2): 352–63. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2008.11.038. PMC 2638020. PMID 19167335. http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0092-8674(08)01513-4. 

Avvakumov GV, Walker JR, Xue S, et al. (October 2008). "Structural basis for recognition of hemi-methylated DNA by the SRA domain of human UHRF1". Nature 455 (7214): 822–5. doi:10.1038/nature0727310.1038/nature07273. PMID 18772889. 

Filippakopoulos P, Kofler M, Hantschel O, et al. (September 2008). "Structural coupling of SH2-kinase domains links Fes and Abl substrate recognition and kinase activation". Cell 134 (5): 793–803. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2008.07.047. PMC 2572732. PMID 18775312. http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0092-8674(08)01013-1. 

Gräslund S, Nordlund P, Weigelt J, et al. (February 2008). "Protein production and purification". Nat. Methods 5 (2): 135–46. doi:10.1038/nmeth.f.20210.1038/nmeth.f.202. PMID 18235434. 

For a complete listing click here.

External links

• Global SGC website
• SGC website hosted by University of Toronto
• SGC website hosted by University of Oxford
• SGC Website hosted by Karolinska Institutet