Dear Sehl Oediter, I am not sure this is the right forum but I cannot resist. While I welcome the announcement of this new and important journal, as I'm sure all other members of the community do, I'd like to urge you reconsider for publication the paper which I submitted to your journal this morning: "Failures in Crystallization of Hen Egg Lysozyme - A Systematic Study". As far as I can see, it meets all the criteria advertised in your call for papers, let alone the fact that much human effort and resources have been invested in this research in my lab. We also prepared a cover picture, which I'm sure you'll find attractive. Please reply in private (i.e. not to the list) as this is a too serious issue.
Kind regards, Boaz Shaanan ----- Original Message ----- From: Sehl Oediter <[email protected]> Date: Wednesday, April 1, 2009 12:11 Subject: [ccp4bb] [ANNOUNCE] Journal of Failed Crystallization Experiments To: [email protected] > Dear Crystallography Community: > > I am happy to announce the Journal of Failed Crystallization > Experiments, a > bimonthly publication that highlights the exciting field of failed > crystallography projects and trials. > > As you are all well aware, most scientific journals have been > publishingcrystal structures for quite some time. While crystal > structures of > biologically relevant proteins and protein complexes might be > important,they really don't evoke the kind of broader interest > as stuff like these > massive sequencing efforts we have to read about in just about > every other > friggin' article in the big journals. [Ed.: I mean, what could > be more > exciting than shotgun sequencing of the lint that collects in > one's belly > button?] Moreover, solving crystal structures is getting so easy > even grad > students can do it. It's all point-and-click these days. All the > real skill > is in finding some way to clone homologs from every species that > ever lived > and getting those damn things expressed before the grant runs > out--maybe one > of them will diffract and then we'll have a shot at a postdoc, faculty > position, or even tenure--if the global financial system doesn't > collapsefirst, thanks to those crooks on Wall Street. > > To respond to this broader interest (which I only parenthetically > wholeheartedly share), the owners, editors, and janitorial staff > at Sell > Press have decided that the crystallography community has been > sitting on a > mountain of tedious data since about time immemorial--or maybe a > littleafter that, but not much. Moreover, we recognize that all > of the easy > structures have been solved and only the hard ones remain and > these hard > ones are going to take a lot of crystallization trials that will > serve as > fodder for hundreds of pages of supplementary information--which > we will be > sure to include only as jpeg attachments with the hopes that optical > character recognition will catch up some day, making this > supplementaryinformation actually useful. But until then, good > luck sifting through it > because it would have been just as easy to include it as an excel > spreadsheet or even a tab delimited text file. Don't make the > mistake of > thinking that we can actually use bzip or tar or could even > grasp that a pdf > is fundamentally different from a flat file database. You're > lucky we are > even competent enough to know how to download attachments from > our web mail. > > For our first issue, we invite you to submit your most agonizing > failures.A4 or letter scoring sheets, scanned at 600 dpi, will > suffice for original > data. We will also accept pictures of wells with oil or > heavy precipitant. > We have decided that clear wells represent hope for crystals > some time in > the future, so we can't accept pictures of clear wells except > when the wells > have obviously dried completely. (We relish dried wells, let me tell > you--nothing screams "FAIL!" like a dry well.) We will > accept pictures of > crystals only if they show no diffraction or at least display > irremediablediffraction pathology. Clean diffraction images will > be accepted only when > the author can demonstrate that their project was being scooped > concomitantwith data collection. > > Please be aware that the Journal of Failed Crystallization > Experiments has a > strict policy regarding data deposition. All data must be > deposited in a > publicly accessible database and any journal submissions must include > acquisition identifiers. Moreover, despite the fact that any of > dozens of > software programs might serve as a reference implementation for > a data > format, we have decided to form a committee of mostly clueless > computerspecialists to design a confusing and unintelligible > data standard for > failed crystallization trials. Moreover, we will randomly change > the format > approximately once or twice per year. The deposition process > will require > that your data conform to our obscure standard. If it doesn't, > we will > advise you with senseless error messages or perhaps our servers > will crash. > We may even drop your connection so your browser will sit there > indefinitelyjust not refreshing and you forgot to note the > session ID before you > uploaded your data. Tough luck. Start again. Oh but wait, the > page isn't > coming up. Restart your browser. Tough luck again. Try > rebooting. Nothing. > Must be our server. Try again tomorrow. > > To entice the community into submitting their reports, we offer the > following tantalizing abstract (to be published in our first > issue along > with the corresponding article): > > ===== > *The 5-HT serotonin receptor serves as the receptor for the serotonin > neurotransmitter and is also the target of many pharmaceutical and > psychotropic compounds. Here we show that this receptor just > can't be > crystallized, no matter what we do. We chopped off the N- > terminus, the > C-terminus, the transmembrane region, and even fused different parts > together that had no business being together. Moreover, we tried > just about > every crystallization reagent in the book. We used PEG, lipids, > salts, and > extreme pH conditions. We tried hanging drops, sitting drops, batch, > dialysis, sparse matrix, and incomplete factorial. We even produced > monoclonal antibody. We tried to cocrystallize with every > possible ligand we > could imagine. I had the drug enforcement agency breathing down > my back for > a while because of all the crazy s**t we were trying. In > conclusion, don't > bother with this receptor. It ain't gonna work. Do something > that's going to > get results, like an enzyme or hypothetical protein from a structural > genomics organism nobody cares about. > ===== > * > Thank you for your interest in our new publication, > > Sincerely, > > Sehl Oediter > Chief Guy in Charge > Journal of Failed Crystallization Trials > Sell Press > Boston, MA > Boaz Shaanan, Ph.D. Dept. of Life Sciences Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Beer-Sheva 84105 Israel Phone: 972-8-647-2220 ; Fax: 646-1710 Skype: boaz.shaanan
