Advanced protein crystallography imaging system

Medical advances, including vaccine design and targeted drug discovery for human diseases, rely on scientists from many different disciplines understanding how proteins in the body function at the molecular level. To achieve this level of detail requires researchers to image molecules, using either protein crystallography or single-particle cryo-EM. Our proposal seeks support for the former method, which continues to play a major role in drug discovery and vaccine design efforts globally. We aim to develop recent imaging technology to tackle the most challenging questions in structural biology, including how chromosomes segregate during cell division, how enzymes function to sense oxygen in our body, how neurons grow and drugs transported into the body. Our researchers and graduates are at the forefront of efforts to provide structural insights into complex proteins that will help researchers globally understand and tackle human diseases.