Biomolecular Interactions Core Facility of the Health Center of the University of Pennsylvania

CANZIANI G, CHAIKEN I

1997-02-01

2001-06-30

Biológica

Tecnologia sanitaria y curativa

The Biosensor/Structural Biology Cores Group was formed originally as a Biosensor Interaction Analysis Core Facility in 1997 through joint seed funding from the UPenn School of Medicine and the Cancer Center. This Facility has provided a resource to investigate biomolecular interactions, and effectors of these interactions, for a wide range of research projects at the University of Pennsylvania aimed at investigating molecular mechanisms in biological systems. In 1999, 5-year funding for the Core was awarded by an NIH P30 grant to the UPenn Cancer Center. Also in 1999, funding was awarded by an NIH P30 grant to the Center for AIDS Research to establish a Structural Biology Core. The mission of the Structural Biology Core is to utilize biosensor resources for macromolecular interaction analysis, in addition to obtain the purified proteins needed for biosensor and other biophysical and structural studies and to guide structure-function studies by computer-aided structure modeling. Based on these developments in 1999 and the resulting overlapping activities of the Cores, we administratively consolidated the organization of protein production, interaction analysis and computer-assisted modeling studies of proteins into the Cores Group. This resource provides a means for investigators to produce purified proteins for interaction and structure-function studies and provides a gate to other resources at UPenn for other biophysical studies, high resolution structural analysis and computer-based design. The Cores Group pursues four main services: • Protein Production, including scaled up expression and purification to provide materials for structural and mechanistic studies; • Interaction Analysis, focussing on optical biosensor analysis of macromolecular interaction kinetics and characterization of assembly mechanisms of proteins; • Molecular Modeling, structure-function analysis using molecular graphics visualization of high resolution structures and structural guidance for mutational analysis; and • Resource Networking, in particular guiding users to technology resources beyond the Cores Group for specialized biophysical, computational and high-resolution structure determination. The main mission of the Biosensor/Structural Biology Cores Group at the University of Pennsylvania is to assist researchers investigating basic biological mechanisms and disease pathology with the resources to elucidate molecular mechanisms and to use these as lead information in molecular and drug design. Coordinated research and collaborations are encouraged amongst biologists, chemists and structural biologists. The Cores Group provides a centralized resource to help researchers obtain protein materials, initiate interaction analysis and structure-function studies, facilitate projects into the molecular/structural area and hence help meet the molecular, structural and drug design goals of researchers at UPenn.