The UNC Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics makes impactful discoveries about molecular mechanisms of biological systems that are relevant to human health. We have important missions in education and research training as well as service to the School, the University, the state, and beyond. As of 2023, we have 23 labs whose leaders are primarily appointed in the Department plus another 14 labs with joint or adjunct appointments. We are a UNC hub for biochemistry, molecular biology, and biophysics. Current strengths of the department include epigenetics/chromatin biology, structural biology, macromolecular dynamics, genome maintenance, cancer cell biology, cellular signaling, the molecular biology of HIV, platelet biology, drug design, and others. The interactive visualization here was generated from our labs’ publication keywords over the last 5 years (2018-2022).

Organization Collaboration

(1/2018 - 12/2022)

We host the Carolina Chromatin Consortium/Chromatin and Epigenetics Research Program and the Molecular & Cellular Biophysics Training Program. We also participate in many interdisciplinary research communities and centers: the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Center for Aids Research, the UNC RNA Discovery Center, the Marsico Lung Institute, the Integrative Program for Biological and Genome Sciences, and many others. Our Department is primarily a basic research unit, but we interact with translational and clinical research groups. These collaborations facilitate both the transfer of new foundational knowledge into the pipeline for new therapies and information from disease states to shed light on biological mechanisms.

We are embedded in a highly connected scientific network, a central hallmark of the UNC culture. In addition to our collaborations within the Department, we work closely with other UNC teams and with researchers around the world. In the last 5 years we have co-authored 20 or more papers with researchers at 23 different institutions in the US and internationally. The interactive visualization here shows 827 co-author partnerships that generated 2 or more publications and the next one shows the nearly 200 organizations we have co-published with between 2018 and 2022.