生命科学 - 结构生物学

结构测定

如果没有精确确定相关大分子的三维结构的方法,人们将无法想象现代生命科学会有何进展。布鲁克最近在技术上的进步和产品的易用性加快了研究速度,显著提高了全球的实验成功率,从而实现了前所未有的专利和学术成果产出高峰。

Proteins and their complexes are involved in almost all cellular processes, including metabolism, cell signaling and differentiation, and reproduction. Understanding these processes at the molecular level requires a detailed understanding the structures of the proteins themselves.

Single crystal X-ray diffraction (SC-XRD) remains the most productive technique for determining the structures of proteins and their complexes. The determination of protein structures is a labor-intensive process, and so development of home-lab SC-XRD instruments that accelerate the production and characterization of diffraction quality crystals is key to successful research. Several 100 KDa

In situ crystallography enables the analysis of crystals directly in the lab and has such has seen a rise in use due to the ability to optimize crystal growth conditions more quickly.
NMR is a technique used in all Structural Biology departments to provide a dynamic complement to the structures determined by SC-XRD.

Ground-breaking crystallography has always been driven by the development of improved tools. This is evident at synchrotron facilities where current beamline upgrades are seeing the introduction of microfocus beams, faster mixed mode photon-counting detectors, data-processing pipelines, and multi-axis goniometers.
Bringing these possibilities to the home lab has been Bruker’s driving vision for the D8 QUEST and D8 VENTURE, our new D8 Structural Biology Solutions.

 

Why bioNMR? New series on how NMR can be used for biology research.

蛋白质及其复合物参与了几乎所有的细胞过程,包括新陈代谢、细胞信号和分化,以及生殖。在分子水平上理解这些过程需要详细了解蛋白质本身的结构。

单晶X射线衍射(SC-XRD)仍然是确定蛋白质及其复合物结构的最有效的技术。蛋白质结构的确定是一个劳动密集型的过程,因此开发家用实验室的SC-XRD仪器,加速生产和表征衍射质量的晶体是成功研究的关键。

原位晶体学能够直接在实验室中分析晶体,因此,由于能够更快地优化晶体生长条件,原位晶体学的使用已经上升。核磁共振是所有结构生物学部门都在使用的一种技术,它可以为通过SC-XRD确定的结构提供动力学信息的补充。

突破性的晶体学一直是由不断改进的分析工具的发展所推动的。这在同步辐射设施中是显而易见的,目前的光束线升级正在引入微聚焦光束、更快的混合模式光子计数探测器、数据处理管道和多轴测角仪。

将这些可能性带入家用实验室是布鲁克对全新的D8结构生物学解决方案——D8 QUEST和D8 VENTURE的期待。