The US National Institutes of General Medical Science has announced it will provide $150 million over five years to seven collaborative projects at US laboratories and academic centers as part of the Protein Structure Initiative (PSI). The consortium aims to develop new automated X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging techniques to speed up the process of determining three-dimensional protein structures. PSI director John Norvell says the seven centers will catalog all existing protein structures into a large public database, and then begin producing 100 to 200 protein structures a year. NIGMS hopes to secure funds for a second five years, ultimately determining 10,000 protein structures. While the UK's Wellcome Trust and several companies have discussed creating an international consortium to speed output of protein structures (Nature 406, 923, 2000), NIGMS officials say the PSI will remain separate from any corporate effort (Nat. Biotechnol. 18, 1036, 2000).