Operations and Maintenance Support: UBC Regional Structural Biology Facility

结构生物学是生命科学的一个分支，旨在提供对生物分子的三维结构的原子水平描述，包括蛋白质、DNA、RNA和糖。这种结构信息对于理解这些生物分子在活细胞中的不同功能至关重要，并为从蛋白质工程到药物开发的应用提供了一张“分子蓝图”。现代结构生物学依赖于三项基石技术：用于研究中小型生物分子的结构和运动的核磁共振光谱，用于确定广泛的蛋白质、核酸和碳水化合物的最高分辨率结构的X射线结晶学，以及用于近原子水平表征超大型大分子络合物的冷冻电子显微镜。这些互补技术中的每一项都依赖于获得先进的仪器和专家人员，以解决生命科学中最具挑战性的问题。

Structural biology is a branch of the Life Sciences that seeks to provide atomic-level descriptions of the three-dimensional structures of biological molecules, including proteins, DNA, RNA and sugars. This structural information is critical for understanding the diverse functions of these biomolecules in living cells, and provides a "molecular blueprint" for applications spanning protein engineering to drug development. Modern structural biology is dependent upon three cornerstone technologies: nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy for investigating the structures and motions of small to medium sized biomolecues, X-ray crystallography for determining the highest resolution structures of a wide range of proteins, nucleic acids and carbohydrates, and cryo-electron microscopy for near atomic level characterization of very large macromolecular complexes. Each of these complementary technologies relies on access to sophisticated instrumentation and expert personnel in order to solve the most challenging problems of the Life Sciences.