Abstract

We will begin with the trillion-dollar question: if resources were unlimited, what would still be holding us back? This will help remove financial considerations from the discussion and focus on the intellectual hurdles. An excellent place to start is crystallization, where the impact of any improvement would be very high, but predictive theory remains elusive. Preparation of electron microscopy grids faces a similar challenge. Each session will focus on a critical challenge in structural biology, and the goal will be formulating the best advice to newcomers to the field who will face these challenges. Where possible, test data with a clear scoring system will be defined, and friendly competition between proponents of different approaches will be encouraged. Current best practices will be described, evaluated and compared and the relative effectiveness of alternative approaches will be announced at the meeting. Open discussion is expected to uncover new insights, new approaches, new algorithms, and no doubt flaws in the tests. By the end of the meeting we will have established not only new best practices, but also improved the criteria we use to assess them.