Department of Life Sciences
MRes in Structural Molecular Biology
Course directors, Dr X. Zhang: xiaodong.zhang@imperial.ac.uk, Professor P. Freemont: p.freemont@imperial.ac.uk
More information
In the post-genome era, there is a wealth of information about the genomes of many organisms, including humans. The next challenge is to assign and understand the functions of the final genome products proteins and, in particular, to understand at the molecular and biochemical level, the functions of identified disease-linked proteins and proteins that carry out basic life processes. The requirement for three-dimensional information is an essential part of this process. With many of the structure determination techniques becoming semi-automatic and routine, there will be a requirement for more broadly trained structural biology researchers who understand the use of complementary techniques for deriving biological function from structure. It is therefore essential that trained structural biologists in both academia and industry have knowledge and skills in all macromolecular structural determination techniques.
This is a one-year research-based postgraduate course based at South Kensington Campus. Students complete two 20-week research projects during the year. The projects are designed to give practical experience of laboratory research and opportunities to learn a wide range of skills:
- Biological nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy
- Cryo-electron microscopy
- Macromolecular structure-function and structural bioinformatics
- Mass spectrometry
- X-ray crystallography
In addition, there are various tutorials covering protein structural principles, cryo-electron microscopy, X-ray crystallography, and NMR. Lecture topics include:
- Macromolecular structure determination
- Macromolecular structure-function relationship
- Macromolecular structure principles and bioinformatics
