PNNL

Abstract

In late 2007 the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) funded two consortia to determine protein structures from biodefense organisms and emerging and re-emerging infectious disease organisms: The Seattle Structural Genomics Center for Infectious Diseases (SSGCID; http://www.ssgcid.org) (Myler et al., 2009) and the Center for Structural Genomics of Infectious Diseases (CSGID; http://www.csgid.org) (Anderson, 2009). The organisms include 31 different genera of prokaryotes, eukaryotes, and viruses from NIAID Category A, B, and C pathogens. Both centers actively solicit the infectious disease research community to identify essential enzymes, virulence factors, drug targets, and vaccine candidates of biomedical relevance and freely provide for them structural data. Indeed, the structural data is provided to the entire scientific community as all structures are immediately deposited into the RCSB Protein Data Bank (PDB; http://rcsb.org) and released. As of August 16, 2011, over 740 protein structures have been deposited into the PDB by both centers and it is projected that they will deposit over 1000 structures upon completion of their five-year mandate, a goldmine of blueprints for structure-based drug design.