Proteins function as supra molecular assemblies whose structure must be known in order to understand function and design drugs that prevent disease. But our ability to experimentally determine the structures of large assemblies is still limited, whereas the structures of individual proteins are determined with increasing ease and speed. Computational methods for deriving the structure of a protein assembly from that of its components, or docking procedures, therefore hold great promise. A growing number of groups develop such methods worldwide. CAPRI (Critical Assessment of PRedicted Interaction) is an international effort, aimed at objectively assessing the performance of these methods by inviting developers to test their algorithms on the same protein targets and objectively evaluating the results. For more details see the official CAPRI web site.
The 3rd CAPRI evaluation meeting follows 2 very successful CAPRI meetings in Europe, and will be the first such meeting held on the American continent. It will gather in Toronto all the groups involved in developing protein-protein docking procedures worldwide. The performance of these procedures will be reviewed based on the most recent results obtained in CAPRI prediction rounds. Each group will also describe their most recent achievements; Round Table discussions will examine major bottlenecks and future directions. The meeting should be of great interest to the structural genomics community in Toronto and to trainees in structural biology and biophysics. Holding it in Canada should attract young Canadian scientists and engineers to the protein docking and modeling field. This field relies heavily on high performance computing, requires sophisticated optimization algorithms and needs integration of knowledge and information from different sources and disciplines.
3rd CAPRI Evaluation Meeting Organizing Committee- Ilya Vakser (University of Kansas, USA)
- Joel Janin ( LEBS-CNRS, Gif-sur-Yvette, France)
- Kim Hendrick (EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute, Hinxton, UK)
- Gary Bader (CCBR, University of Toronto, CA)
- Boris Steipe (Biochemistry, University of Toronto, CA)
- Mike James (University of Alberta, Edmonton, CA)
- David Wishart (University of Alberta, Edmonton, CA)
- Elizabeth Tiller (UHN, University of Toronto, CA)
- Aled Edwards (University of Toronto, CA)
- Shoshana J. Wodak (The Hospital for Sick Children, University of Toronto, CA)
CAPRI Management Team
- Kim Henrick (EBI-EMBL, Hinxton, UK),
- Joël Janin (LEBS-CNRS, Gif-sur-Yvette, France)
- John Moult (CARB, Rockville, USA)
- Lynn Ten Eyck (University of California San Diego, USA)
- Michael Sternberg (Imperial College London, UK)
- Sandor Vajda (Boston University, Boston, USA)
- Ilya Vakser (SUNY at Stony Brook, USA)
- Shoshana Wodak (The Hospital for Sick Children, University of Toronto, CA).