Final Report Summary - MAX-INF2 (European macromolecular crystallography infrastructure network 2) The aim of the MAX-INF2 project was twofold; namely the achievement of long-term integration of the infrastructure for Macromolecular crystallography (MX) in Europe, as well as the organisation of workshops and schools for the European MX user community, especially for young scientists. The two approaches were tightly integrated, since one way to ensure effective use of MX facilities is to educate the user community and the infrastructure stakeholders concerning the intricacies of their operation. Basic training on the methods in and around MX would also be provided. In order to fulfil the aim of the integration of infrastructure for MX, integration workshops were organised. These meetings brought together the MX beamtime suppliers from the various synchrotron sites and the application developers of MX. In total three integration workshops were organised. Concerning the second, tightly integrated approach, the schools provided a broad theoretical background on the metrology of MX, as well as on the dissemination of new approaches within method development, while the workshops were more like practically-oriented. In total two theoretical schools were organised whose one of the main purposes was to encourage good practice, common protocols and collaboration by educating the practitioners of MX. Special emphasis was laid on new developments concerning hardware and software applications. Moreover, 23 practical workshops in total were organised with diverse thematic areas, namely from basic crystallography to more applied science. The topics covered ranged from basic introduction into crystallography to specialised ones such as phasing, radiation damage and structure aided drug design. One of the workshops concerned the further development of new algorithms used in the modern crystallography software. It gathered specialists from structural biology software development to exploit the technology for maximum benefit and to propose new methods that envision future gains in processing power. The concept was rather novel and proved to be very successful. Related documents Final Report - MAX-INF2 (European macromolecular crystallography infrastructure network 2)
