Seems it's worth thinking about this as an experiment that has actually
been done: BB and wiki have been available in parallel for many years
now; so where has all the activity happened, where do people go for
information - and more to the point, where are other people happy to
volunteer information?
According to what you say, the experiment has a clear outcome.
Even crystallographers are social beings, and thrive on interaction.
Wikis don't interact.
I should add I'm not at all clear what problem is being addressed here:
if I get an email I don't want to read, I make a tiny hand-movement (=
hit delete) and it vanishes forever. Are people suggesting we abandon
an empirically proven mechanism merely to save me the need for this tiny
hand-movement?
phx
On 14/02/2014 07:19, Kay Diederichs wrote:
Nat,
that's why I set up the CCP4 wiki at
http://strucbio.biologie.uni-konstanz.de/ccp4wiki/index.php/Main_Page ! The
idea is that everybody benefits: experienced crystallographers/biologists can
concentrate on the new and difficult questions coming up on the bulletin board,
and novices find answers to those ever-recurring questions. Everybody can
contribute answers, or improve existing ones!
But the wiki can only be useful in the long run if there are contributors. Why
are there (almost) no contributors? It cannot be due to technical difficulty;
it's very easy to contribute to a wiki. One guess is that a posting on a BB is
more socially rewarding, because the interaction via emails is more immediate.
Re-vitalize the wiki!
Kay
On Thu, 13 Feb 2014 07:21:14 -0800, Nat Echols <nathaniel.ech...@gmail.com>
wrote:
One comment (not a complaint) on all this: it seems like the same questions
get asked over and over again. If there is a good place for a general
crystallography FAQ list it is well past time for one to be put together -
or maybe it just needs to be better advertised? At a minimum, for instance:
- what cryoprotectant should I use?
- how do I get big single crystals?
- how do I improve diffraction?
- how can I tell if I've solved my structure?
- why is my R-free stuck?
- is <pick random statistic> suitable for publication?
Some of the other common queries ("name my blob!") still need to be handled
on a case-by-case basis, but it would be much more efficient for everyone
if the standard answers were collected somewhere permanent.
-Nat
On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 7:05 AM, Eugene Valkov <eugene.val...@gmail.com>wrote:
I absolutely agree with Juergen.
Leaving aside methods developers, who are a completely different breed,
there is no such thing as a "crystallographer" sitting in a dark room
solving structures all day. If there are, these are anachronisms destined
for evolutionary demise.
More and more cell biologists, immunologists and all other kinds of
biologists are having a go at doing structural work with their molecules of
interest themselves without involving the "professionals". Typically, they
learn on the job and they need advice with all kinds of things ranging from
cloning and protein preps through to issues with tetartohedrally-twinned
data and interpreting their structures.
So, a modern structural biologist is one who is equipped for the wet lab
and has some idea of how to go about solving structures. CCP4BB is a
wonderful resource that is great for both the quality of the advice offered
to those that seek it and for the variety of topics that are addressed in
the scope of structural biology. I have learnt greatly from reading posts
from very skilled and knowledgeable scientists at this forum and then
implemented these insights into my own research. I am very grateful for
this.
In short, please do not discourage your colleagues, particularly very
junior ones, from posting to the CCP4BB. Some of the questions may appear
quaint or irrelevant but it is easy to simply ignore topics that are of no
interest!
Eugene
On 13 February 2014 14:41, Bosch, Juergen <jubo...@jhsph.edu> wrote:
Let me pick up Eleanor's comment:
is there something like a crystallographer today ? I mean in the true
sense ?
I think as a "crystallographer" you won't be able to survive the next
decade, you need to diversify your toolset of techniques as pointed out in
this article
http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj7485-711a
And I'm not quite sure how software developers see themselves, as I would
argue they are typically maybe not doing so much wet lab stuff related to
crystallography (I may be wrong here) but rather code these days.
What "type" of crystallographer is a software developer ?
I think like our beloved crystals "we" come in different flavors. And we
need to train the next generation of students with that perspective in mind.
Just my two cents on a snowy day (>30cm over night)
J�rgen
......................
J�rgen Bosch
Johns Hopkins University
Bloomberg School of Public Health
Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute
615 North Wolfe Street, W8708
Baltimore, MD 21205
Office: +1-410-614-4742
Lab: +1-410-614-4894
Fax: +1-410-955-2926
http://lupo.jhsph.edu
On Feb 13, 2014, at 6:41 AM, Eleanor Dodson <eleanor.dod...@york.ac.uk>
wrote:
I agree with Frank - it keeps crystallographers modest to know how
challenging wet lab stuff still is..
Eleanor
On 12 February 2014 19:23, Robbie Joosten <robbie_joos...@hotmail.com>
wrote:
It's not an e-mail bulletin board, but Researchgate seems to be quite
popular for wet lab questions. IMO the Q&A section of the social network
is
a bit messy. That said, the quality seems to improve gradually.
Cheers,
Robbie
Sent from my Windows Phone
________________________________
Van: Paul Emsley
Verzonden: 12-2-2014 19:23
Aan: CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Onderwerp: Re: [ccp4bb] Sister CCPs
On 12/02/14 15:59, George Sheldrick wrote:
It would be so nice to have a 'sister CCP' for questions aboud wet-lab
problems that have nothing to do with CCP4 or crystallographic
computing, The is clearly a big need for it, and those of us who try
to keep out of wet-labs would not have to wade though it all.
FWIW, the remit of CCP4BB, held at jiscmail-central, is describes as:
/The CCP4BB mailing list is for discussions on the use of the CCP4
suite, and macromolecular crystallography in general./
Thus wet-lab questions are not off-topic (not that anyone recently
described them as such).
Having said that, Jiscmail mailing lists are easy to set-up (providing
that you can reasonably expect that the mailing list will improve
knowledge sharing within the UK centered academic community) and
relatively low maintenance. I, for one, would not be entirely unhappy to
miss out on questions about lysis.
Paul.
--
Dr Eugene Valkov
Room 3N049
Division of Structural Studies
MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
Francis Crick Avenue
Cambridge Biomedical Campus
Cambridge CB2 0QH, U.K.
Email: eval...@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 267358
