Dear Artem, These sort of things are very frustrating. I had a similar situation with a published modelled structure of low sequence identity to that we were working on with crystallography. ie the modelled structure coordinates were not, could not be, deposited nor was it attached to the journal article. To write to the author would have revealed our project work, and my collaborator would not have agreed to making the enquiry anyway. The journal was reputable but their policy of not attaching the model coordinates to an article presumably was based on the public database policy and so an enquiry from me would presumably have gone straight to the author from the editor. We pressed on independently but we got scooped. In these situations is the question what is the **least worst** option? I won’t pronounce on that choice for your challenge because there may be fine details, which will affect your choice. All the best, John Emeritus Professor John R Helliwell DSc
> On 7 Apr 2020, at 16:08, Artem Evdokimov <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Dear CCP4ers, > > I would like to solicit your thoughts on the following (this is a real > situation, but salient details are changed): > > Imagine that you're an industrial scientist in a small company, working on > the Bavarian Sausage (Weisswurst) Esterase project. The overall structure is > previously unknown, with no good homologs in the PDB, trying to model is "OK > not great" so the structure is really needed... > > Then, you find an article from a large commercial competitor, that somehow > managed to solve the Stadtwurst (Saxony Sausage) Esterase structure (which is > a very close homolog to the one you need!). > > Sounds good - but as you read the paper you realize that the authors managed > to find a journal that allowed them to publish their work without disclosing > neither the coordinates of the model, nor even the crystallization conditions > of the protein - all that's available is a tantalizing still picture of the > active site in surface mode, with a ball-and-stick ligand positioned such > that it is impossible to say what it interacts with. > > So you sit and ponder - whether to write to the Editor, or maybe to contact > the authors directly (but then they would know that you're working on this, > which is not necessarily great since you're competing), or to just buck up > and do the structure on your own (which feels a bit wasteful). Then, you > realize that your friends at CCP4 have a lot of wisdom to offer, so you sit > down and pen an email... > > Any thoughts? > > Artem > > To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: > https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1 ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1
