Objective

The field of Structural biology has undergone huge advances in the last five years. Significant developments in technology have been made in the fields of ultra-high field NMR spectroscopy, synchrotron sourcesand cryo-Electron Microscopy. Instruct-ERIC is a distributed European Research Infrastructure offering both access to these cutting edge technologies at leading European laboratories.Alongside access, Instruct-ERIC offers and expertise and training in a range of structural biology techniques that is open to both industry and academic researchers. Building capacity and experience within both academic and industry settings in response to accelerating demand is central to the remit of Instruct-ERIC. The scientific impact of the technology at Instruct-ERIC Centres is demonstrated by recent scientific highlights that include using cryo-Electron Microscopy to elucidate the conformational changes of the bacteriophage phi812 baseplate induced by binding to the host cell wall and application of nanobody technology to create a chaperone that stabilised the Glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor (GLP-1R). The nanobody chaperone enabled crystallisation of the peptide-activated complex in lipidic-cubic phase and structure determination to near-atomic resolution by X-ray crystallography.