News

Some of the top names in protein science research will gather at the Asilomar Conference Center near Monterey, California, on December 11-14, for the first PKR Protein Phosphorylation Workshop. The workshop, organized by the SDSC-based Protein Kinase Resource (PKR - http://pkr.sdsc.edu), will feature more than 30 scientists who will present the latest findings on kinases and phosphatases, that play key roles in cellular regulation.

The workshop will offer the opportunity to hear from renowned experts in kinase research and provide a forum for discussing the ideas and needs related to the development of bioinformatics resources in protein phosphorylation. More about the workshop can be found at: http://pkr.sdsc.edu/asilomar/ .

Registration is on a first-come, first-serve basis, but is limited to 175 attendees.

"As we move into this new genomic era where the entire kinome of several organisms is known, and as the structural space within each of the protein kinase subfamilies is slowly being filled in, we think it is timely to communicate with the research community on how to develop an appropriate resource to represent these data," said Susan Taylor, co-PI of Protein Kinase Resource.

Presentations are organized into five sessions: Kinase Evolution and Classification, Plant Kinases, Chemical Biology and Inhibitors, Motif Prediction and Protein-Protein Interactions, and Structure-Function and Modeling. Two poster sessions will be held, and poster submissions will be accepted through November 14 at http://pkr.sdsc.edu/asilomar/poster_instructions.php.

The program, co-chaired by Susan Taylor and Michael Gribskov of UCSD and SDSC, aims to bring together a diverse set of experimentalists, computational biologists, and bioinformaticians to consider how database efforts might best serve both the experimental and theoretical kinase research communities.

"We want to counter the frequent trend that bioinformatics resources and tools are developed isolated from the demands of the target user community. PKR wants to be a service tailoredto the specific requirements of protein phosphorylation research and this workshop provides researchers from academia and industry with the opportunity to communicate their needs to the PKR developers," said R. Hannes Niedner, technical lead and project manager of the PKR.

"With the Protein Kinase Resource, we intend to establish the new standard in online bioinformatics services, which provides full integration of access to biological information with its visualization and analysis. The interactions with the research community facilitated by the workshop will help advance this initiative into a useful, feature-rich resource." said Sasha Buzko, head of scientific development at the PKR.

The workshop is funded in part by the database infrastructure program of the National Science Foundation (DBI-0217951) and industry sponsors: The Serono Group, GlaxoSmithKline, Cell Signaling Technology, Upstate, and Lilly.