An intrinsically disordered proteins community for ELIXIR

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) are now recognised as major determinants in cellular regulation. This white paper presents a roadmap for future e-infrastructure developments in the field of IDP research within the ELIXIR framework. The goal of these developments is to drive the creation of high-quality tools and resources to support the identification, analysis and functional characterisation of IDPs. The roadmap is the result of a workshop titled “An intrinsically disordered protein user community proposal for ELIXIR” held at the University of Padua. The workshop, and further consultation with the members of the wider IDP community, identified the key priority areas for the roadmap including the development of standards for data annotation, storage and dissemination; integration of IDP data into the ELIXIR Core Data Resources; and the creation of benchmarking criteria for IDP-related software. Here, we discuss these areas of priority, how they can be implemented in cooperation with the ELIXIR platforms, and their connections to existing ELIXIR Communities and international consortia. The article provides a preliminary blueprint for an IDP Community in ELIXIR and is an appeal to identify and involve new stakeholders.

Beam emission spectroscopy turbulence imaging system for the MAST spherical tokamak

A new beam emission spectroscopy turbulence imaging system has recently been installed onto the MAST spherical tokamak. The system utilises a high-throughput, direct coupled imaging optics, and a single large interference filter for collection of the Doppler shifted D(α) emission from the ~2 MW heating beam of ~70 keV injection energy. The collected light is imaged onto a 2D array detector with 8 × 4 avalanche photodiode sensors which is incorporated into a custom camera unit to perform simultaneous 14-bit digitization at 2 MHz of all 32 channels. The array is imaged at the beam to achieve a spatial resolution of ~2 cm in the radial (horizontal) and poloidal (vertical) directions, which is sufficient for detection of the ion-scale plasma turbulence. At the typical photon fluxes of ~10(11) s(-1) the achieved signal-to-noise ratio of ~300 at the 0.5 MHz analogue bandwidth is sufficient for detection of relative density fluctuations at the level of a few 0.1%. The system is to be utilised for the study of the characteristics of the broadband, ion-scale turbulence, in particular its interaction with flow shear, as well as coherent fluctuations due to various types of MHD activity.