UOXF Oxford, UK

Role and contribution

UOXF has a long history of biomedical crystallography and a particularly strong track record in virus crystallography, since the determination of foot-and-mouth disease virus, some 15 years ago. Recently our interests have expanded to include the development of HTP methods directed at difficult targets. These efforts are embodied in The Oxford Protein Production Facility (OPPF) which forms part of the Division of Structural Biology within Medical Sciences in the University of Oxford. The OPPF was the first substantial UK structural genomics activity, established by the UK Medical Research Council as a proof-of-principal for the utility of HTP methods to proteins of biomedical relevance. The principal OPPF target areas are human and viral proteins. Prof Stuart is the chair of the executive committee of the OPPF, Dr Owens is the project manager and Drs Grimes and Harlos are also members of the executive. The expectation is that, if successful, the OPPF will become a formal national centre. Oxford is also active on the European stage ; Prof Stuart is the coordinator of the FP5 EC IP SPINE. Oxford has a strong track record in expression of difficult proteins in cells of higher eukaryotes, in particular mammalian (eg Love et al., 2003, where mammalian expression was successfully combined with SeMet labelling) and insect cells.

David Stuart and Jonathan Grimes are both extremely experienced macromolecular crystallographers with strong track records in the structural analysis of not only whole viruses (for example the structure determination of PRD1, the first crystal structure for a virus containing a membrane), but also viral replication proteins (e.g. Salgardo et al., 2003). Dr Ray Owens is very experienced in both tissue culture and project management, initially in an industrial context and latterly in an academic environment. Dr Karl Harlos has led the developments of nanolitre crystallisation methods in Oxford (Walter et al., 2003 ; Brown et al., 2003). Thomas Walter is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the crystallization facility, Weixian Liu is extremely accomplished in tissue culture and Sarah Sainsbury is expert in protein purification.