EMBL Hamburg News
First International Symposium on Structural Systems Biology in Hamburg
Scientists from across the many disciplines of structural biology came together for the First International Symposium on Structural Systems Biology on the 24th and 25th September. Circa 250 participants attended the one and a half day conference at the University of Hamburg to contribute to the growing field of Structural Systems Biology. Among other funders, the conference was supported by the European project INSTRUCT, which aims for coordinated infrastructures in structural biology across Europe.
Scientific sessions gave delegates the opportunity to discuss present and future challenges in systems biology, key technologies and applications, computational structural systems biology, and aspects of biological systems. The key note speaker, Gregory Petsko from Brandeis University, USA, ended the conference on a high note with his talk on the systems biology of neurodegenerative diseases.
The conference was organized and chaired by the committee of the Centre for Structural Systems Biology (CSSB) which will be built on the DESY Campus in Hamburg Bahrenfeld. The CSSB will be a collaborative research facility with about eight research groups focusing on Infection Biology, Systems Biology and Structural Biology. To date, 13 Partners including several universities from North Germany as well as EMBL, and the Helmholtz and Leibnitz Institutes have expressed interest to join CSSB. The Centre will be able to take advantage of the current and future infrastructures on the DESY Campus and will mark the beginning of an exciting age of research in Hamburg and Germany as a whole. The First International Symposium on Structural Systems Biology was an ideal platform to discuss the future of Structural Systems Biology and how the CSSB can contribute to this field. The CSSB committee also used the conference as an opportunity to get together to discuss the next organizational steps of the project.