This second issue of ABRF NEWS should reach you shortly before the Protein Society Meeting and the associated ABRF Satellite Meeting in San Diego. The committee looks forward to seeing you in California and sharing recent, and exciting, subcommittee activities.
We recently initiated several approaches to contact core facilities that are not yet aware of ABRF. Applied Biosystems, Milligen/Biosearch, and Proton Instruments, all graciously distributed our newsletter and an invitation to join ABRF to all persons on their mailing lists. Since we could not compare entries on the separate confidential lists, current members may have received one or more of these mailings. If you are in this category, please be understanding and pass extra copies on to colleagues who might be interested in ABRF. We also enhanced our international visibility by a series of presentations and posters at the Methods in Protein Sequence Analysis (MPSA) meeting in Sweden last month.
We are now more than half way through our first year of membership with dues; membership size has not suffered from initiation of fees! These dues have provided the critical baseline funding for organizational activities. This support plus the generous vote of confidence from our corporate sponsors will allow ABRF to continue this newsletter, sponsor meetings with invited speakers, fund the unknown sample mailings, and all of the other activities designed to help resource facilities and their users. Corporate sponsors are listed on page 3. Current ABRF directors should have received a mailing list distributed earlier this summer.
ABRF's recent activities include application for tax exempt status, establishment of a new Peptide Synthesis/Mass Spectrometry subcommittee, and presentation of a session on core facilities at the Eighth International Conference on MPSA in Kiruna, Sweden. Reports from this meeting and the new Subcommittee are included in this newsletter; papers related to this session will appear in the MPSA Proceedings.
There has been a strong response to the 1990 sequencing and amino acid analysis unknowns distributed by the respective subcommittees earlier this year. The results will be presented at the ABRF Satellite Meeting on August 11. The schedule for this meeting appears on page 3. Please note that this meeting will end with an open discussion of ABRF accomplishments and future plans. Come with your concerns and ideas on how ABRF can serve its members more efficiently in the coming year.
Finally, I alert you to several new features in this newsletter including: "Positions Available" and "Ideas & Methods Forum". We encourage members and corporate sponsors to contribute items for future newsletters. You are also invited to express you opinions through "Letters to the Editor". Your opinions and contributions help to make this newsletter communicate!
Ronald Niece
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Created: 10th August 1995
Last modified: 10th August 1995