SASvtf Activities Timeline

February 3, 2017: Letter to the current SASvtf membership to start planning a virtual meeting in May to:

•    review progress to date on the implementation of our recommendations as outlined in our 2013 report in Structure and plan next steps; and
•    consider in detail the fourth recommendation from the SASvtf; that is “criteria need to be agreed upon for the assessment of the quality of deposited data and the accuracy of SAS-derived models, and the extent to which a given model fits the SAS data.”

To satisfactorily achieve our next phase of work, and gain broad community support for our recommendations, also proposed expansion of the SAS expertise on the SASvtf.

February 18, 2017: Letters received from wwPDB leadership team with charge to SASvtf and SAS and NMRvtfs regarding data and meta-data required for SAS and SAS/NMR model deposition and validation.

February 19, 2017: Masaaki Sugiyama (Kyoto), Patrice Vachette (Saclay Paris), Frank Gabel (Institut de Biologie Structurale, Genoble), Lois Pollack (Cornell), and Dina Schneidman-Duhovny (Hebrew University) to join the SASvftf.  All accepted.

March 2017: Poll group and set date for a virtual meeting of the SASvtf for Thursday May 4.  

March 30, 2017: Completed review and first draft of update of the preliminary “draft” publication guidelines for Biomolecular SAS that are currently on the IUCr Journal web site and also published (Jacques, Guss, Svergun and Trewhella “Publication Guidelines for Structural Modelling of Small-Angle Scattering Data from Biomolecules in Solution,” Acta Cryst. D68, 620-626, 2012) including figures and tables for assembling and presenting the necessary metadata, results, validation for publishing and deposition of biomolecular SAS data.

April 2 - 26 2017: SASvtf members review and comment on manuscript to produce a version for consideration at the 4 May meeting as the basis for responding to the Feb 18 letters from the wwPDB leadership team.
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May 4, 2017: The SASvtf will meet virtually and discuss plans, outstanding issues and agree on our recommendation to the wwPDB leadership on “validation of data and metadata coming from small-angle scattering (SAS) studies of biological macromolecules”

May-June, 2017: With agreement of co-authors on final changes, propose to submit the Draft Guidelines paper and use as a basis to respond to wwPDB leadership team regarding deposition and validation of SAS data and models.     

June 16, 2017: Report to the NMRvtf on our 4 May meeting outcomes and plan for response to our joint request from wwPDB.

August 2017: As the outgoing Chair of the IUCr Commission on Small-Angle Scattering (CSAS), JT will hold and open CSAS Meeting at the IUCr Congress Hyderabad where we will report on the updated guidelines. The preliminary guidelines were developed in consultation with the Journals and SAS Commissions and have been the subject of ongoing discussions at IUCr and at the triennial SAS meetings where JT has also been communicated the activities of the SASvtf. Thus all streams leading to the updated publications will have converged.