Turku has recently become one of the nodes of the Finnish Instruct National infrastructure established in 2014. Groups from the University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University are actively participating in the TURKU Instruct-FI activities and aim to provide a platform to facilitate protein structure studies and bioinformatics analysis for academic researchers and the biotech sector.

The modern infrastructure for macromolecular X-ray crystallography and protein characterization is available for European researchers through Instruct, an EU-ESFRI program. Instruct aims at fostering the development of structural biology in Europe. It is coordinated by the Instruct office in Oxford, UK.

Biocenter Finland Structural Biology network formed the framework for an Instruct National Affiliate Center (NAC) established in 2014. Instruct-FI has nodes at the Universities of Helsinki, Oulu, Tampere, Turku, Eastern Finland, and at the Åbo Akademi University and has been included in the research infrastructure roadmap of the Academy of Finland.

An application to join INSTRUCT-EU as full member has been launched and if successful Instruct-FI will provide access to other European centers of the Instruct-EU network for the researchers in Turku and it will also make the infrastructure and expertise at the University of Turku available for European researchers. Instruct also supports organization of international courses in Turku.

Contact persons

Tassos Papageorgiou: tassos.papageorgiou[at]bioscience.fi
Tiina Salminen: tiina.salminen[at]abo.fi