Objectives

The research objectives of the Laboratory are to provide a description of the structures of complex biological macromolecules and macromolecular assemblies and to use this information for an interpretation of biological function. The major research techniques are protein crystallography, molecular dynamics simulations, electron microscopy and NMR. These methods are complemented by expertise in the fields of gene cloning, protein expression and purification, protein crystallisation, analysis of protein/protein and protein/drug interactions, mass spectrometry and molecular modelling. Our target biological systems include the regulatory proteins of the cell cycle, protein kinases, viruses, viral proteins and virus receptors, ion channels, membrane proteins and receptors, molecular recognition in the immune system, programmed cell death, signal transduction proteins, cell adhesion complexes, drug target enzymes and structure based drug design, phytochrome light receptors and model proteins for light sensitive reactions. In addition there are programmes on computational and experimental analysis of protein drug interactions and continuing interest in development of protein crystallographic methods and radiation damage.

Staff

The staff of the Laboratory comprises 4 Professors, 1 Reader, 2 University Lecturers, 4 Research Fellows, 24 postdoctoral research assistants, 27 research students and 3 technical support staff. The Laboratory is housed on the Ground, 2nd and 3rd floors of the Rex Richards Building. The building, completed in 1985, is adjacent to the main Biochemistry Department and is shared with the MRC Immunochemistry Unit, and the Oxford Centre for Molecular Sciences (OCMS) NMR facility.

Facilities

The Laboratory has a purpose built temperature controlled crystallisation Laboratory equipped with a crystallisation robot (Tecan) and a microscopic imaging system. For the collection of X-ray diffraction data there are three detectors: a Mar 345mm imaging plate and a Proteum R Smart 6000 CCD on a newly-installed Bruker MicroStar generator, and a second Mar 345mm imaging plate on a RU200H Rigaku generator, reputedly the longest running generator in the world.

The data collection facilities are supported by the computation facility comprising a high-availability Linux cluster serving over 7TB of RAID disk storage, several high-performance computing clusters with an aggregate of over 150 dual-processor nodes, a number of older Alphaserver and Silicon Graphics systems, and numerous PC and Macintosh computers for display and analysis of protein structures. The systems are linked by a Fast-Ethernet network plus a core Gigabit ethernet for the main servers, and to the Internet via the University 10-Gigabit Ethernet backbone and JANET (the UK Joint Academic NETwork).

The Laboratory has a Philips CM120 electron microscope with cryo-imaging facilities and ancillary equipment for image reconstruction both for single particles and 2D crystals.

The structural studies are supported by biochemical facilities for gene cloning, protein expression, purification and characterisation, including surface plasmon resonance and Fourier transform infra red spectroscopy. A feature of our recent building programme has been to enlarge our biochemical laboratories. Workers in the Laboratory have access to other facilities in Oxford that include NMR, mass spectrometry oligonucleotide synthesis, DNA sequencing, amino acid sequencing, and peptide synthesis.

More Information

The Laboratory produces an annual report which includes a more detailed description of the research, and further information can the found on group web pages.