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The Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology

Wellcome Trust 4-year PhD Programme Research Areas

The various research programmes within the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology utilise diverse biophysical techniques to answer important biological questions including protein crystallography , nuclear magnetic resonance , mass spectrometry , electron microscopy/ crystallography , fluorescence , CD , microcalorimetry , ultracentrifugation , surface plasmon resonance (SPR), confocal microscopy, atomic force microscopy (AFM) and molecular spectroscopy. The breadth and depth of research that these groups span naturally requires an interdisciplinary approach, and staff from the Schools of Chemistry and Physics are intimately linked with the programme in addition to those from the Faculty of Biological Sciences .

Our research programmes are universally problem-oriented and address major problems in contemporary biology that can be advanced by structural studies using the full power of the many techniques that we have available to solve them. There are currently major research themes in the areas of Protein DNA/RNA Interactions, Membrane Proteins Structure and Function, Protein Folding and Assembly, Molecular Recognition, Protein Engineering, Directed Evolution and Catalysis, Chemical Biology, Bioinformatics, Molecular Motors and Molecular Virology. Further details of these areas can be found from the list of Wellcome Trust PhD supervisors.