SPINE bioinformatics and data-management aspects of high-throughput structural biology

SPINE ( Structural Proteomics In Europe) was established in 2002 as an integrated research project to develop new methods and technologies for high- throughput structural biology. Development areas were broken down into workpackages and this article gives an overview of ongoing activity in the bioinformatics workpackage. Developments cover target selection, target registration, wet and dry laboratory data management and structure annotation as they pertain to high- throughput studies. Some individual projects and developments are discussed in detail, while those that are covered elsewhere in this issue are treated more briefly. In particular, this overview focuses on the infrastructure of the software that allows the experimentalist to move projects through different areas that are crucial to high- throughput studies, leading to the collation of large data sets which are managed and eventually archived and/ or deposited.