The new legal status for Instruct transforms it into a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC), joining 16 others across Europe. As the second UK-hosted ERIC, Instruct will provide the European structural biology community with continued access to high-quality, stable and sustainable services. Over the past four decades, European researchers have played a pivotal role in developing increasingly sophisticated technologies including super-powerful cryo-electron microscopes. Instruct has been supported since its inception by the Medical Research Council, on behalf of the UK as the host country.
Instruct provides access to some of the most sophisticated methods that allows researchers to generate images of molecules at near-atomic level, in far greater detail than was previously possible. This detail allows them to understand how the molecular machines in our bodies work and determine the building blocks of proteins, viruses and cells. Cryo-EM, one of the key technologies at the forefront of the structure revolution, is allowing researchers to better understand how diseases, like Alzheimer’s disease, affect the brain, and how specific molecules involved in causing disease might be targeted with drugs or vaccines.
Minister Jo Johnson was able to announce at the event new multi-million pound funding for further cryo-EM facilities in UK, some of which will be available through the Instruct Centre UK, located in Oxford and the Harwell Research Campus. This investment combined with the new status of Instruct-ERIC, will enable the best and brightest minds across Europe to continue to share knowledge and state-of-the-art equipment, to advance discovery science and improve human health.
Professor David Stuart, Director of Instruct-ERIC and MRC Professor at the University of Oxford, said: “Continued stability for partnerships across Europe is invaluable at this critical and exciting time for structural biology. International collaboration has always been important for structural biology as we need the collective knowledge and skills of chemists, physicists, computer scientists and biologists to develop the technology, before we can advance the science. Today’s announcements represent a welcome commitment to strengthening infrastructure, research collaborations and enabling the brightest minds to work together across borders.”
Dr Nathan Richardson, MRC Head of Molecular and Cellular Medicine and Chair of Instruct-ERIC Council, said: “We’re delighted to be able to provide extra support, complementary to other investments, enabling access for even more researchers to cutting-edge technology at a crucial time, allowing them to tackle the biological questions that will help advance human health.”

For more information about Instruct-ERIC, please visit their website.

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ERINHA 

ERINHA Research infrastructure, currently under preparatory phase, enters into implementation phase from July 2017. Since then, ERINHA will operate under AISBL legal statutes.
ERINHA has been conceived to reinforce European research capacities in the field of study of highly infectious emerging and re-emerging diseases bringing together European high containment laboratories and complementary facilities. ERINHA aims to provide a coordinated transnational access to its state-of-the-art BSL4 and complementary member research capabilities and expertise to relevant scientists from academia and industry. It will contribute to more efficient national, European and global preparedness to outbreaks and enhance European capacities in the field of pathogenic agents to prevent and respond to the spread of epidemics with high impact on health, economy and society.

EMPHASIS 

EMPHASIS aims at the development of an integrated European phenotyping infrastructure able to test genotypes in current and future agro-climatic scenarios and provide services such as access to diverse facilities under controlled and field conditions. An integral part of the EMPHASIS strategy is the link of data acquisition to European data management approaches as well as to crop models simulating performance in current and future climatic scenarios. Additionally, EMPHASIS will develop, evaluate and disseminate novel technologies that can be used beyond plant sciences and, provide new opportunities to European stakeholders from academia and industry.