Structural Biology platform

Networking tools and skills for biomaterial analysis and life sciences

The Platform of Structural Biology strengthens, in a complementary and multidisciplinary perspective, the links and interactions between the following skills and research infrastructures focusing on the study of issues related to biomaterials and life sciences present at the Area Science Park’s Large Laboratories:

• Production and purification of recombinant proteins and their biochemical, biophysical and functional characterisation (CNR-IC, Elettra);
• Advanced methods of X-ray diffraction of biomacromolecules using synchrotron light (CNR-IC, Elettra);
• Imaging techniques (SAXS-WAXS-GISAXS) applied to areas of biological, medical and strategic nanomaterial research (CNR-IC, Elettra);
• Spectroscopic techniques for the conformational characterisation of proteins in a physiological environment (Elettra);
• Scanning electron microscopy of electrons (SEM and STEM), scanning ion microscopy (FIB), transmission microscopy (TEM) and scanning probe microscopy (AFM and SNOM) of nanostructured biomaterials (CNR-IOM)
• Phase contrast X-ray holography and imaging for applications in bio-medical diagnostics (CNR-IC, Elettra), in silico simulations, high performance computing (HPC) and data management infrastructures, and machine learning software and techniques for 3D image reconstruction and management (Democritos CNR-IOM)

In order to strengthen the investigation capacities in the field of structural biology, it is also intended to acquire instrumentation dedicated to cryogenic electron microscopy (CryoEM), a technique which, thanks to recent incremental improvements in both hardware and dedicated software, has made a huge qualitative step forward, and is a candidate to become an irreplaceable tool in the research and development of new products in numerous industrial fields, such as pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, food, cosmetics and the biomedical sector.