Welcome to the
Workshop on Cryo-EM Modeling Based on X-ray Crystallography at Urbana

Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Urbana, Illinois

January 8-10, 2014

Modeling the molecular processes of biological cells is a craft and an art. Techniques like theoretical and computational skills can be learnt by training, but meaningful applications are achieved only with experience and sensitivity. The Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group, in collaboration with Forschungszentrum Julich, offered a workshop, with the goal of training participants in cryo-EM guided modeling of macromolecular structures, and providing participants with practical experience in using related methods. A total of 19 participants attended the workshop at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology on the University of Illinois campus. Participants learned relevant physical concepts, mathematical algorithms, and computational methods, including molecular dynamics simulation, de novo structure determination based on cryo-EM maps, deformable elastic networks, stereochemical validation of proteins and nucleic acids, and quality checks of fitted structures. After lectures and discussions in the morning, afternoons were devoted to hands-on computer laboratories where participants delved into 247 pages of tutorials, on laptops humming with computational biology software, e.g., VMD, NAMD, and DireX. Workshop supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, NIH 9P41GM104601 "Center for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics".