Structural Biology

Researchers

Full professors involved

Different services

Structural biology is the study of the molecular structure and dynamics of biological macromolecules, such as proteins and nucleic acids, and how alterations in their structures affect their functions.

It incorporates the principles of molecular biology, biochemistry, and biophysics.
Different questions are answered by structural biology. For examples:

How are the amino acids or nucleic acids arranged in three dimensions at atomic resolution?What does a binding site look like?
What conformational changes in proteins result after ligand binding?
What are the effects of point mutations in particular diseases?
What are potential sites for drug action, and how could such drugs be designed?

Approaches for protein purification

We provide different and complementary approaches for protein purification: gel filtration, ion exchange, hydrophobic, and affinity chromatography. Purified proteins can also be chemically characterized by high-resolution mass spectrometry, using a limited proteolysis strategy (Lip-MS).

Services

DSF’s Structural Biology services includes:

Protein expression and purification
Various expression systems: insect cell, HEK293 cell, and E. coli
Molecular exclusion chromatography (gel filtration)
Ion exchange chromatography (IEX)
Hydrophobic chromatography
Affinity and Immobilized Metal Affinity (IMAC) chromatography
Customized protein purification
Flexible selection of protein purification tags
Mass spectrometry (MS): Limited Proteolysis coupled to Mass Spectrometry (LiP-MS)
Nucleic acids target characterization