Overview
Type: Vanderbilt Reinvestment Award (VRA)
This project will reinvest in the Center for Structural Biology (CSB) by acquiring a new microscope that will enable the laboratory to remain on the cutting-edge of research. The Titan Krios will replace an aging microscope that is insufficient to support the high-resolution cryo-EM needs of Vanderbilt faculty. The Titan Krios will enable major scientific discoveries across a broad range of fields in biology and medicine from the inner workings of bacteria to the consequences of disease-associated mutations in essential proteins of DNA repair. It will allow for automated data collection capabilities, enabling researchers at Vanderbilt to fully embrace the current “resolution revolution” that has occurred in the field of structural biology.
Structural biology strives to determine the structural basis for how and why biological molecules interact and how they act together to enable normal cell function and malfunction in disease. New technological developments in the field of cryo-EM have enabled this technique to pass the resolution threshold and tackle problems at scales that cannot be addressed by crystallography and NMR. Vanderbilt has a thriving group of highly productive researchers who share the goal of using molecular structure to understand cellular function, including 22 structural biology faculty experts in the Center for Structural Biology (CSB). These and many other investigators on campus are working on biologically compelling and structurally challenging problems that have become accessible to structural analysis as a result of the revolution in the capabilities of modern cryo-EM instrumentation.
Faculty Participants
Lead Faculty in bold
School of Medicine (Basic Science)
- Teru Nakagawa, Associate Professor of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics
- Tina Iverson, Associate Professor of Pharmacology
- Walter Chazin, Professor of Biochemistry
- Yi Ren, Assistant Professor of Biochemistry
School of Medicine (Clinical)
- Timothy Cover, Professor of Medicine
- Dana Lacy, Professor of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology
College of Arts & Science
- Brandt Eichman, Professor of Biological Sciences
- Lauren Jackson, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences