Structural genomics efforts at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Peking University

Structural genomics efforts at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Peking University are reported in this article. The major targets for the structural genomics project are targeted proteins expressed in human hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells, proteins related to blood diseases and other human proteins. Up to now 328 target genes have been constructed in expression vectors. Among them, more than 50% genes have been expressed in Escherichia coli, approximately 25% of the resulting proteins are soluble, and 35 proteins have been purified. Crystallization, data collection and structure determination are continuing. Experiences accumulated during this initial stage are useful for designing and applying high-throughput approaches in structural genomics.Abbreviations: NSFC, National Natural Science foundation of China; MOST, Ministry of Science and Technology of China; CAS, Chinese Academy of Sciences; NSRL, National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory in Hefei; BSRF, Beijing Synchrotron Radiation Facilities; HSPC, Hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells; APL, acute promyelocytic leukemia; ATRA, all-trans retinoic acid; COG, Cluster of Orthologous Groups of proteins.