Capabilities

Types of Projects
Structure-determination pipleline
Consulting

The CSB provides resources (equipment and expertise) for most aspects of structural biology. Some of the resources are housed directly in the CSB; others are available through other UNC core facilities.

For consultation and project planning, please contact the CSB director.

Typical types of projects that can be carried out in the CSB

Sample Preparation
Protein expression in E. coli and insect-cell systems
Protein purification
Basic characterization of macromolecular properties

Structure determination
Crystallization of biological macromolecules
Structure determination by X-ray crystallography and/or NMR spectroscopy:

• de-novo structures
• mutant structures
• protein-protein and protein-nucleic acid complexes
• structures of complexes with small-molecule ligands (substrates, products, inhibitors)

Structural Bioinformatics
Advanced sequence analysis
Identification of functional residues
Homology modeling
Molecular dynamics
Quantum mechanics calculations

Biophysical Studies
Stability
Ligand binding
Protein-protein and protein-nucleic acid interactions

Drug Development
Structure-based drug design
Structure-aided drug design

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The structure-determination pipeline

Using the resources in the CSB, entire structure-determination projects can be carried out. The structure determination pipeline typically consists of the following steps:

A given project may utilize the entire pipeline or only a subset of the listed activities.

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Consulting

The CSB is also available for consultation for:

• preparation of grants
• preparation of publications & presentations
• manuscript review
• design of structural-biology experiments
• any other structural-biology-related aspect

Please contact the CSB director for any inquiries.

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