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Research topic: Structural biology

Structural biology focuses on the molecular structure and dynamics of biological macromolecules such as proteins and DNA, and how changes in their structures affect their function.

Biomolecules are too small to be able to study their details even in the most advanced microscopes. Nevertheless, structural biology focuses on the molecular structure and dynamics of biological macromolecules such as proteins and DNA, and how changes in their structures affect their function. This is an interdisciplinary field, involving both molecular biology, biochemistry and biophysics.

Macromolecules are involved in all cell functions and for them to be able to do so, it is essential that each molecule obtains its very specific three dimensional shape. Understanding the structure and function of different macromolecules is therefore of great interest to biologists. Structural biologists are also interested in understanding processes such as protein folding, protein dynamics, molecular modeling and drug design. Essential tools to determine the structure of macromolecules include protein expression, X-ray crystallography, mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy of proteins (NMR), electron microscopy and cryo-electron microscopy (Cryo-EM).

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Published Dec. 14, 2016 2:47 PM - Last modified Aug. 14, 2023 10:54 AM