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British biologists say that a lack of investment in high-throughput technology for solving protein structures is hindering their progress in structural genomics.

In a report sent to the government's research councils and the Wellcome Trust at the end of last month, 102 biologists argue that limited access to robotic equipment that rapidly expresses, purifies and crystallizes proteins is leaving them behind in the scientific race to exploit gene-sequence information.

“If the UK community does not develop and adopt new technologies within a relatively short space of time, it will lose leadership in some of the most exciting and rewarding areas of biology,” says Neil Isaacs, a structural biologist at Glasgow University. “There is a rapidly growing discrepancy between the level of access to such technology in the UK compared to that in the US, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Europe.”

The biologists call for up to £50 million (US$72 million) to be spent on infrastructure for structural genomics over the next five years. But Isaacs says that the report is not just a demand for money, but is intended to inform the government ahead of this summer's comprehensive spending review.

High-throughput techniques help to solve structures such as this chloride-ion channel. Credit: RODERICK MACKINNON

Structural genomics is often defined as an effort to determine the structures of all of the proteins expressed in a genome, or a region of a genome. Sceptics say, however, that a blanket approach is inefficient, as it is likely to yield many worthless structures. Richard Henderson of the Medical Research Council's Laboratory for Molecular Biology at Cambridge University, for example, says that what he terms “intelligent structural biology” might prove to be more productive.

But Isaacs says that high-throughput techniques can bring a powerful approach to certain problems, such as those involving target proteins that are difficult to crystallize. He cites the recent solving of the structure of a protein in chloride-ion channels (see Nature 415, 287–294; 2002), which he says could not have been done without automation.

Colin Miles, head of biomolecular sciences at the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), says the council has already commissioned a review of Britain's needs for structural genomics. “Given the size and scale of the requirements in this field, it is obvious that a more considered approach is required,” he says.

CORRECTION: R. MacKinnon Nature 416, 261–262; 2002