NEW YORK STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY CENTER INC

Programs

1. Research conducted at the simons electron microscopy center (semc) is aimed at determining the structure of macromolecules to help understand their function. As of december 31, 2023, the facility had 12 transmission electron microscopes, a dual-beam focused ion beam scanning electron microscope, as well as ancillary equipment for cryoem sample preparation. In 2023, semc actively served over 750 users from nysbc's nine member institutions as well as users from the national community through nih-funded centers (national center for cryoem access and training and national center for in-situ tomographic ultramicroscopy). Semc develops open-source technologies to accelerate cryoem workflows from sample preparation to structure determination through its simons foundation initiatives (simons resource for automated molecular microscopy and simons machine learning center). Semc also provides extensive training to members of the community through workshops, courses, and other training sessions. In several projects, semc staff has been involved extensively as collaborators developing new machine learning algorithms and software for automating cryoem, and contributing to solving the structures…

   $13,402,147 spent
   65% of program spending

2. Nysbc provides access to high-field nuclear magnetic resonance (nmr) spectroscopy to faculty from its nine member institutions. The nmr facility instrumentation includes nine nmr spectrometers that generally operate 24 hrs/day, 7 days/week. In 2023, each spectrometer was available, on average, 340 days. These resources allow researchers to determine the structure of proteins in solution and in solid state atomic resolution, data that provides insight into the functional properties of the proteins. In 2023, group members from the laboratories of 19 affiliated principal investigators made use of these instruments. Data collected with these instruments produced 21 publications in eminent scientific journals. The center operates the center on molecular dynamics by comd/nmr, a biomedical technology research resource supported by u.s. National institutes of health grants rm1 gm145397 and located at nysbc. The mission of comd-nmr is to make available to the biological research community advanced nmr spectroscopic and computational methods for characterizing protein and nucleic acid conformational dynamics in biological processes.

   $3,197,727 spentof which $133,333 as grants
   15% of program spending

3. Nysbc has maintained x-ray crystallography resources at brookhaven national laboratory (bnl) since 2003. Nysbc has developed and operates beamline 19id-nyx at the national synchrotron light source ii (nsls-ii). Nyx provides the nysbc member institutions and associated investigators with access to synchrotron radiation and instrumentation necessary for collecting crystallographic data on biological macromolecules. Nyx has performed technical and scientific commissioning and started user operations in the spring of 2019. The primary accomplishments of the beamline program for 2023 were upgrades to automation and software and supporting user experiments.

   $1,295,289 spent
   6% of program spending

4. Special projects group: the special projects group at nysbc is a team of expert scientists that performs fee-for-service protein structure determination and protein production services for external clients. In addition, they also receive funding through collaborative research projects with academic and government laboratories. They began a second five-year niaid contract using structural biology to investigate the etiologic agent for lyme disease, borrelia burgdorferi, to design a vaccine or discover antibody therapeutics against lyme disease. They also participated in structural biology research projects with collaborators at rutgers university investigating ricin and shiga toxins to rationally design better inhibitors against these two toxins.rna lab: the rna research conducted at nysbc focuses on understanding how the 3-dimensional structure of rna forms and how this structure, and conformational dynamic, enable diverse biological function. This nih-funded effort is primarily centered on understanding rnas of viral origin, with particular interest in how these viral rnas interact with the cellular machinery of their host cells and then manipulate that machinery to achieve…

   $2,868,205 spentof which $78,333 as grants
   14% of program spending

The 4 programs described on its FY2023 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $20,763,368.