Research
The Astbury Centre brings together structural molecular biologists, cell biologists, chemists and physicists who want to use the power of interdisciplinary science to understand the dynamic biological processes that underpin life. We are working to understand how the structure and function of a wide range of biological molecules (and the complexes they make) underpin the function of healthy cells and to understand what goes wrong in disease. The Astbury Centre specialises in all major techniques for high-resolution structure determination of large molecules, including cryo-electron microscopy, NMR spectroscopy, X-ray crystallography, as well as a battery of sophisticated biophysical tools such as mass spectrometry, confocal and super-resolution imaging, atomic force microscopy amongst many others.
Crucial to the mission of the Centre is to integrate the results of structural studies with powerful programmes of functional analysis, and further support our discoveries by theoretical analyses such as bioinformatics, molecular modelling and simulation. Our mission is therefore to use the power of modern integrated structural biology to drive new biological and biomedical discovery, and deliver on our ultimate aim: to understand life in molecular detail.
Our research is organised around four Themes and Research Capabilities
Research Themes | Research Capabilities |
The Dynamic Interactome | Chemical Biology |
Communication at the Cell Surfac | Structural Biology |
Host Pathogen Interactions | Biophysics |
New Tools for Biological Discovery | Molecular Interactions in the Cell |