Abstract
The Seattle Structural Genomics Center for Infectious Disease (SSGCID) is a consortium of researchers at Seattle BioMed, Emerald BioStructures, the University of Washington and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory that was established to apply structural genomics approaches to drug targets from infectious disease organisms. The SSGCID is currently funded over a five-year period by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to determine the three-dimensional structures of 400 proteins from a variety of Category A, B and C pathogens. Target selection engages the infectious disease research and drug-therapy communities to identify drug targets, essential enzymes, virulence factors and vaccine candidates of biomedical relevance to combat infectious diseases. The protein-expression systems, purified proteins, ligand screens and three-dimensional structures produced by SSGCID constitute a valuable resource for drug-discovery research, all of which is made freely available to the greater scientific community. This issue of Acta Crystallographica Section F, entirely devoted to the work of the SSGCID, covers the details of the high-throughput pipeline and presents a series of structures from a broad array of pathogenic organisms. Here, a background is provided on the structural genomics of infectious disease, the essential components of the SSGCID pipeline are discussed and a survey of progress to date is presented.
Highlights
The Seattle Structural Genomics Center for Infectious Disease (SSGCID) is a consortium of researchers at Seattle BioMed, Emerald BioStructures, the University of Washington and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory that was established to apply structural genomics approaches to drug targets from infectious disease organisms
The SSGCID is currently funded over a five-year period by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to determine the three-dimensional structures of 400 proteins from a variety of Category A, B and C pathogens
The protein-expression systems, purified proteins, ligand screens and three-dimensional structures produced by SSGCID constitute a valuable resource for drug-discovery research, all of which is made freely available to the greater scientific community
Summary
Structure-based drug design has played an increasingly important role in drug development. Diseases (CSGID; http://www.csgid.org/) to solve protein structures from potential bioterrorism agents and emerging and re-emerging infectious disease organisms (Myler et al, 2009; Anderson, 2009). These organisms include 31 different genera of bacteria, eukaryotes and viruses, which have been divided between the two centers. In striving to meet the needs of infectious disease researchers within the greater scientific community, the SSGCID interacts heavily with academic collaborators to solicit target nominations and to freely provide for them structural data, as well as clones, purified proteins and other laboratory materials, for primary research purposes (Myler et al, 2009). The SSGCID represents a unique structural biology resource for researchers focused on the discovery and development of novel cures or treatments for infectious diseases
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