The Protein Structure Initiative (PSI) and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) announce that the annual workshop, entitled '2009 NIGMS Workshop - Enabling Technologies for Structural Biology', will be held 4–6 March 2009 at the NIH Natcher Conference Center in Bethesda, MD. This workshop focuses on the technical challenges of protein structure determination and presents the latest technological and methodological innovations.

Many issues in structural genomics and structural biology are as applicable to the individual bench scientist as they are to high-throughput research centers. The preliminary program includes keynote presentations by Michael Rossmann and Frank Raushel; six topical sessions entitled “Protein–protein interactions and complexes”, “Technologies for functional studies”, “Homology modeling for experimentalists”, “Problems and solutions”, “New and improved technologies”, “Combined approaches”; and a poster session. All classes of protein from uncharacterized hypothetical proteins to membrane proteins and protein–protein complexes will be discussed.

Abstracts can be submitted until 11 February 2009, and the deadline to register for this free workshop is 20 February 2009. For further information regarding the 2009 NIGMS Workshop, online registration and abstract submission, visit http://www.blsmeetings.net/2009workshop_enablingtechnologies.