Role and Contribution
The Structure Biology Programme is part of the Institute of Cell & Molecular Biology, Uppsala University and is headed by T.A. Jones. This Programme has a long experience working in all aspects of macromolecular crystallography, including protein expression, crystallization, methods development for model building, refinement and validation, Internet based functionality, structure solving (including the third virus structure to be solved, STNV, Jones & Liljas, 1984). Prof. Jones is also head of RAPID, an integrated Centre for structural biology and medicinal chemistry, funded by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research. This Centre brings together structural biologists (Prof. Unge is responsible for protein production, Prof. Mowbray for target selection, Mrs. Bergfors is responsible for crystallization, Doc. Kleywegt for methods development; all PIs are involved in structure determination), computational biologists/simulators (headed by Prof. Åqvist), and medicinal chemist (under the leadership of Prof. Hallberg and Doc. Karlén, Dept. of Medicinal Chemistry, UU). As well as his structural publications, Prof. Jones is active in crystallographic methods development, in particular model building, and refinement. He is the author of the model building programs Frodo and O, and has published over 120 papers in refereed journals. Prof. Unge has been working in the field of virus crystallography (STNV and MS2) and viral enzymes (HIV protease and reverse transcriptase, and P. falciparium aspartyl protease plasmepsin II) for more than 25 years, and was instrumental in the structure solution of the third virus to be solved. Prof. Mowbray has 25 years’ experience working with protein structure and biochemistry. Mrs. Bergfors is widely recognised as an expert in the art of protein crystallization. Doc. Kleywegt is interested in crystallographic and bioinformatics methods development, and has an active structure solving group. Prof. J. Åqvist works on simulating enzyme mechanisms and their interaction with inhibitor molecules. Prof. Hallberg has been involved in inhibitor design and synthesis for 20 years, and has worked with Unge and Åqvist on structure-based inhibitor design. Doc. Karlén is a medicinal chemist, specializing in in silico inhibitor design.
ICMB Uppsala, SE
