A New Section of Acta Crystallographica

Howard Einspahr, International Union of Crystallography Journals

Howard, perhaps you could tell us how you initially got involved in protein crystallography?

I started out as a small molecule crystallographer some years ago. In the 70s at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, I was working with Charlie Bugg and Bud Suddath. The lab had started as a small molecule crystallography lab, but during this period it moved into the protein field. That was a great development and it was a very interesting time for me. I got into protein crystallography by determining the structure of pea lectin.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham really came into its own during that period; the university was in fact created at that time. The University of Alabama Medical School had always been in Birmingham, but it just began to grow by leaps and bounds. It was a very exciting time and I am happy to say that I grew with it.

What happened next?

As part of a biotechnology revolution in the pharmaceutical industry, the first wave of protein structure groups for drug design were formed in drug companies beginning in 1984, and as part of that wave I joined the Upjohn Company in Michigan and worked there for a number of years. In 1993 I joined Bristol-Myers Squibb and I worked there until my retirement a couple of years ago.

And you worked with Herb Klei there?

Oh yes. Herbert Klei is a young man with whom I've shared many interests over the years. I enjoyed working with Herb at BMS and I have an enormous amount of respect for him. In fact I'd like to say that one of the things that has characterized all of my time in industry is that everyday I went to work with really highly talented, highly motivated people. It was a wonderful time, there was always a sense of urgency, everybody wanted to get to work and make progress; it was a really exciting period for me, and I enjoyed it very much.

From a technical point of view what type of developments were you working on that you can talk about?

In the early days I think everybody worked on the structure of renin, hoping to control blood pressure by inhibition of that enzyme. I don't think that ever proved to be a successful therapeutic strategy, but there were a lot of other projects along the way. Some were more structural projects, meant to illuminate biology rather than guide chemical design. At Bristol-Myers Squibb we had a wide variety of projects, most I really can't talk about, some that are about to appear as products in the next few years.

Presumably you have had an association, an involvement with the IUCr, for some time?

I think I went to my first IUCr meeting just before I joined the Upjohn Company. That was in Hamburg, Germany. I was aware of the IUCr because of its publications, the Acta Crystallographica family of journals, and because of the International Tables for Crystallography, which are the bedrock reference books for any practicing crystallographer. I tried to stay close to the organization over the ensuing years. I served on the U. S. National Committee for Crystallography, the adhering body to the International Union for the United States, and I was there for 2 terms I believe.

Along the way I got involved in the IUCr journals, and that is one of the real important aspects of the International Union. Two of the notables in the small molecule area, Jerry Donohue and Dick Marsh, both of whom I'd trained under, worked with the journals in various capacities and I learned from them the intense interest in scientific publication and concern for maintaining quality and scientific standards. Charlie Bugg at UAB, who was editor-in-chief for many years, started Acta Crystallographica Section D, which is the biological crystallography section. So I was close to that development, and sometime around 1997, I became a co-editor when Jenny Glusker was editor of Acta Crystallographica Section D.

Are there any new developments coming along in that area?

Yes, primarily because the number of structures produced on a yearly basis has been increasing so dramatically. It started increasing in the early 90s. It looks like an almost exponential growth, one that is difficult to keep up with in terms of publication; there are a lot of pages needed to get that work published. But there are accelerants that have emerged recently. There is an expected onslaught of structural genomics papers, for example; there are also many, perhaps thousands, of crystal structures done in the pharmaceutical industry that have not been released, not been put into the database.

It became clear to IUCr Journals that in order to meet the needs for publication, we were going to have to change the way we did things and offer another opportunity for publication; make it rapid because there were so many structures coming out at such a high rate, make it briefer, make it easier perhaps by just making everything electronic.

Last year the executive committee of the IUCr gave the mandate to launch another section of Acta Crystallographica, Section F. This will be an electronic journal for publication of macromolecular crystallography. It will be a partner to Acta Cryst D and it will be similar, although not identical, to the relationship between Acta Cryst Sections B and C and the all-electronic Acta Cryst E. The journals of the IUCr have pioneered the use of the all-electronic format. It has been a wonderful success in terms of Acta E, and we hope we are just as successful as they are.

When will this be available?

Acta Crys F launches in January 2005. The first issue is being assembled now and we will "put it to bed", so to speak, at the end of December. We are also hoping to include as soon as possible a streamlined route from database deposition to publication so that duplication of effort in assembling the data is kept to a minimum for publication. That development is well under way and the people at the protein databank have been doing marvelous work for many years, work that has made this kind of effort possible. We are really grateful for that organization and the work that they do.

Further Information: http://journals.iucr.org