Dear fellow crystallographers,
I'd like to add yet another piece to the ongoing discussion about C3b
& Co., and the importance of submitting diffraction images in
addition to structure factors.
Partly in response to some letters that had just appeared in the same
journal, on 16 July together with some colleagues I sent a one-page
comment to the editor of Science exactly on this matter. You can read
it here:
http://www.biosci.ki.se/groups/ljo/tmp/diffraction_images.pdf
As you will see, what we wrote very much mirrors the general opinions
that have been expressed on ccp4bb during the last couple of days.
However, Science declined to publish our letter; on 2 August we
therefore sent it to Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, which
after a few days also deemed it "unsuitable" for the journal. Uhm!
I will not elaborate as to why such an issue should not concern these
journals, considering how many crystallographic structures have been
debated recently. But I felt compelled to bring this up again in this
occasion, since it is quite clear that we (almost) all agree on the
fact that availability of raw images would improve things. And
indeed, this was the take-home message of the communication in Nature
by Janssen/Read/Brünger/Gros. So I have a simple suggestion: if we
are convinced that this is an idea worth pursuing, why don't we come
up with a common statement concerning this issue, undersigned by all
that agree on the need of making available raw diffraction images in
addition to structure factors? This could be sent to RCSB, to editors
of scientific journals publishing structure papers, as well as -
perhaps - to an open-access journal, so that it would also be
formally published and made available for free to the whole
community. Hopefully, the latter might help bring the issue to the
attention of funding bodies (after all, someone would eventually have
to pay for the required storage media).
One last (but important) point: as it should hopefully be obvious
from the tone of our original letter, our main reason for suggestion
image submission was not at all to start checking everyone else's
data in search for faults! In fact, it was exactly the opposite: we
wanted to help saving information, not destroying it. Should we
decide to go ahead and make our voice heard as a community, it would
be nice if we kept this disposition...
Awaiting comments!
With best regards,
Luca
PS: Since we are talking about fabricated - oops, suspect -
structures, I thought I should provide some evidence that our
submissions actually took place:
http://www.biosci.ki.se/groups/ljo/tmp/science.pdf
http://www.biosci.ki.se/groups/ljo/tmp/nsmb.pdf
See, they actually happened :-)
PS2: My colleagues E. Morgunova and R. Ladenstein are currently away,
so I am the only person to be blamed for the above considerations.
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Luca Jovine, Ph.D.
Karolinska Institutet
Department of Biosciences and Nutrition
Hälsovägen 7, S-141 57 Huddinge, Sweden
Voice: +46.(0)8.6083-301 FAX: +46.(0)8.6089-290
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
W3: http://www.ki.se/
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