LearningLabs
Structural Biology - Deciphering the chemistry of life
Hamburg, 24 - 26 April 2008
Group Picture
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EMBL Hamburg / International School Hamburg
Programme (English)
Programme (German)
Photos
After Monterotondo in 2004 and Grenoble in 2006, it was now time for ELLS to take the LearningLABs to the Hamburg Outstation!
This first ELLS LearningLAB held in German enabled a group of high school teachers from Austria, Belgium, Germany and Sweden to discover the very fast developing field of Structural Biology at one of the leading European Structural Biology Research Institutes: EMBL Hamburg located on the site of the renowned German Synchrotron Research Centre (DESY).
The programme was designed in close collaboration between EMBL Hamburg team leaders, Jochen Müller-Dieckmann and Manfred Weiss, high school teachers Sally Draper-Though from the International School Hamburg (ISH) and Dieter from Gymnasium Farmsen-Hamburg, as well as ELLS/EMBL Education Officers Alexandra Manaia and Philipp Gebhard.
The Hamburg LearningLAB format was slightly different from usual, with half the activities being conducted at EMBL and the other half in a classroom setting at the Hamburg International School. Sally Draper-Though played a crucial role in getting permission from the ISH Headmaster and Head of Science and in making all the arrangements. Thanks for your great job, Sally! We were all impressed by the quality of the school facilities and by the highly professional and friendly staff!
The seminars and hands-on activities focused on important steps in the classic protein crystallisation work-flow, such as protein purification and crystallisation, freezing the crystals, working on the beamlines, processing of diffraction images and 3D-model visualisation. The high school teachers also got insights in high-throughput crystallisation and on drug design and they had the opportunity to get a closer look at the DESY beamlines.
The LearningLAB wouldn't have been such a success without the contributions from several colleagues:
- We are especially grateful to Jochen Müller-Dieckmann and Manfred Weiss, who were intensely involved in all organisational steps, gave very interesting scientific talks, guided tours to facilities and were always there to discuss and socialise with the high school teachers!
- EMBL Hamburg PhD students Hubert Mayerhoferwere and Linda Schuldt conducted the Jena Bioscience Protein Starter Crystallization kit activity. Thanks to their precious instructions, every group obtained beautiful crystals! Linda and Hubert also helped to build very nice molecular models using the Protein Folder modular kit, developed by the Centre for Structural Molecular Biotechnology (CBME) in collaboration with The Centre for Scientific and Cultural Dissemination (CDCC) at the University of São Paulo in Brazil.
- We warmly acknowledge EMBL Heidelberg scientists Klaus Scheffzek and Aidan Budd, as well as Roman Hilling from Bayer Schering for their excellent seminars!
We're looking forward to the next EMBL Hamburg LearningLAB!