Dear Peter,
How many crystallographers does it take to transform bad data into good
data?
None, you need a modeller. Only a modeller can give you a structure with
perfect
geometry. Data just introduces experimental errors into what would
otherwise be a perfect
structure.
If you have good data do you need crystallographers?
...
Of course there all the cases in between. That ... you are right, is the
other half of the story.
From a biological point of view, only borderline cases make "cents" ($+¤)
to store.
The experimenter in consultation with a beamline scientist at an SR
facility is the best
small commitee suitable to evaluate what is worth keeping. I am sure that
the images
that are worth storing for a long long time would fit on a few Tb at a
reasonable cost.
Storing everything would make it harder to find something worth improving
in the future.
Enrico.
On Tue, 18 Oct 2011 17:12:42 +0200, Peter Keller
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear Enrico,
>
> Please don't get me wrong: what you are saying is not incorrect, but it
> is only half the story.
>
> On Tue, 2011-10-18 at 15:13 +0200, Enrico Stura wrote:
>> With improving techniques, we should always be making progress!
>
> Yes, of course!
>
>> If we are trying to answer a biological question that is really
>> important,
>> we would be better off
>> improving the purification, the crystallization, the cryo-conditions
>
> You have left X-ray crystallography out of this list. It is a technique
> like the others, and can also be improved :-)
>
> It may be true that the number of crystallographers that are working on
> improving instrumental methodology and software is small compared to the
> number working on improving wet-lab techniques, but that number is not
> zero, and the contribution is significant. The rest of you benefit from
> that work!
>
>> instead of having to rely on
>> processing old images with new software.
>>
>> I have 10 years worth of images. I have reprocessed very few of them
>> and
>> never made any
>> sensational progress using the new software. Poor diffraction is poor
>> diffraction.
>
> Maybe so, but certain types of datasets are useful for methods and
> software development, even if no new biological insights could be gained
> by reprocessing them. These datasets are often hard to get hold of in
> practice, especially when they are in someone's lab on a tape that
> no-one has a reader for any more.
>
> Obtaining protein, growing crystals and collecting new data in such a
> way that the interesting features of those datasets are reproduced can
> be much much harder than curating the images would be. This is
> especially true for software-oriented people like us who don't have
> regular access to wet-lab facilities.
>
>> Money can be better spent buying a wine cellar, storage works for wine.
>
> Images have already been lost that ought to have been kept. The
> questions are: how to select the datasets that are potentially of value,
> and how to make sure that they don't disappear.
>
> Regards,
> Peter.
>
--
Enrico A. Stura D.Phil. (Oxon) , Tel: 33 (0)1 69 08 4302 Office
Room 19, Bat.152, Tel: 33 (0)1 69 08 9449 Lab
LTMB, SIMOPRO, IBiTec-S, CE Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, FRANCE
http://www-dsv.cea.fr/en/institutes/institute-of-biology-and-technology-saclay-ibitec-s/unites-de-recherche/department-of-molecular-engineering-of-proteins-simopro/molecular-toxinology-and-biotechnology-laboratory-ltmb/crystallogenesis-e.-stura
http://www.chem.gla.ac.uk/protein/mirror/stura/index2.html
e-mail: [log in to unmask] Fax: 33 (0)1 69 08 90 71
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