The Center for Structural Biology is a multi-disciplinary center for experimental investigations designed to examine the structural and functional characteristics of biological macromolecules and how these changes in these properties relate to specific diseases. Projects currently under investigation are examining the underlying mechanisms for alcoholism, cancer, diabetes, liver and heart disease.

The Center for Structural Biology is currently comprised of the following faculty members from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology:

      Thomas Hurley, Ph.D.- Center Director 
      Zhong-Yin Zhang, Ph.D. - Co-Investigator and Chair of the Department
      Millie Georgiadis, Ph.D. - Co-Investigator
      Qi-Zhuang Ye, Ph.D. - Co-Investigator
      Yuichiro Takagi, Ph.D. - Co-Investigator
      Samy Meroueh, Ph.D. - Co-Investigator 
      Quyen Hoang, Ph.D. - Co-Investigator

The Center for Structural Biology is currently equipped with three state of art instruments:

X-Ray Crystallography
The instrument pictured on the right is a Bruker X-8 Prospector equipped with a CCD detector for collection of X-ray diffraction data.  

Biacore
The image on the left shows the Biacore 3000 instrument for examination of macromolecular binding interactions.

Automated Crystallization Robot                                      
The Art Robbins Gryphon is a robotic crystallization instrument capable of accurately and automatically distributing crystallization reagents and as little as 100 nanoliters of protein solution into each crystallization condition.  This technology allows investigators to pursue crystallization screens while using 1/10 of the protein required for manual crystallization setups.