EINSTEIN NEWS FULL STORY

Einstein Researchers Receive Major Federal Grant to Decipher the Three-Dimensional Shapes of Proteins

July 1, 2005 -- (BRONX, NY) -- Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University are among a group of scientists who will receive a total of $300 million over the next five years from the National Institutes of Health. The NIH announcement launches the second phase of the NIH's Protein Structure Initiative-an effort to determine the three-dimensional shapes of thousands of proteins in organisms ranging from bacteria to humans. 

Information from the Protein Structure Initiative will help to reveal the roles that proteins play in health and disease and aid in developing new and more effective drugs. The initiative will be carried out by 10 research centers, and the Einstein scientists are members of one of those centers.

The Protein Structure Initiative's first phase has already "solved" the structures of more than 1,100 proteins. Now, with the funding of the initiative's second phase, the 10 research centers will build on that record of progress and continue developing automated techniques that will reveal the shapes of proteins even faster. 

The Einstein scientists are part of the New York Structural GenomiX Research Consortium, which participated in Protein Structure Initiative's first phase as well. In addition to the Einstein contingent, the consortium includes the company Structural GenomiX, Inc., and researchers from Brookhaven National Laboratory, Columbia University, and the University of California at San Francisco.

"Determining protein structures is crucial for understanding complex biological systems and for developing the next generation of drug targets and medicines," says Dr. Stephen Burley of Structural GenomiX, Inc., who leads the consortium. "We're excited to be partnering with some of the finest medical research institutions in the world in this undertaking." 

At Einstein, the effort to identify new protein structures will be led by Dr. Steven Almo, professor of biochemistry and physiology & biophysics. Dr. Andras Fiser, assistant professor of biochemistry, will use specialized computer software to select the most suitable proteins for study and analyze their structures to determine their biological functions. 

"What is particularly exciting about this second phase is that we can build on the progress we've already made so that we can examine proteins from almost any important area of biology," says Dr. Almo.

During the first phase, the New York Consortium researchers solved approximately 200 protein structures. In this next phase, their goal will be to solve thousands more.

After determining new protein structures, the 10 research centers will submit them to the Protein Data Bank, a public repository of three-dimensional biological structures that researchers worldwide can access. The data bank will help researchers better understand the function of proteins, predict the shapes of unknown proteins, identify new targets for drug development, and even compare protein structures from normal and diseased tissues.

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