In order for our site to display correctly you will need a newer version of your web browser.
The following browsers support numerous web standards including CSS,XHTML, and the DOM (a universal means of controlling the behavior of web pages):
- Netscape v7 or higher (all platforms), Mozilla FireFox (Windows), Camino (Mac OS X), Galeon (Linux GNOME Desktop) or other browser stemming from the Mozilla.org project.
- Opera v7 or higher (Windows, Linux)
- Apple's Safari (Mac OS X)
- Konqueror (Linux KDE Desktop)
- Microsoft Internet Explorer v6 or higher (Windows) or v5 or higher (Macintosh)
Please note that this is not intended be an exhaustive list of browsers that support web standards, nor a test of browser compliance, nor a side-by-side comparison of various manufacturers’ browsers.
Finding Cures. Saving Children.
Structural Biology
A full understanding of how a biological macromolecule functions is not possible until its three-dimensional structure has been determined at the molecular level. Structural information is also essential for designing drugs that can mediate function and treat disease. These studies are typically performed by using X-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, and computer graphics. The Department of Structural Biology was established in 1996 to bring this expertise and these techniques to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
The department currently has four faculty members (two X-ray crystallographers and two NMR spectroscopists), an adjunct faculty member from the Hartwell Center with expertise in computational structural biology, and state-of-the-art X-ray, NMR and computing facilities that are overseen by a full-time staff.
The X-ray facility contains two rotating-anode X-ray generators, two image-plate detectors, one CCD detector and a four-circle diffractometer for small molecule crystallography. The NMR facility has two 600-MHz spectrometers, one equipped with a cryoprobe, and an 800-MHz spectrometer equipped with a cryoprobe. In addition, the department has extensive shared facilities for computing, molecular graphics, spectroscopy, biochemistry, and molecular biology studies. St. Jude is also a member of SER-CAT, the South East Regional Collaborative Access Team, which has constructed two beamlines at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago. These beamlines provide St. Jude researchers and their colleagues in the Southeast US access to the world's most modern and powerful X-ray source.
Structural biology is a discipline that benefits greatly from interactions with other research groups. Collaborations yield not only important molecules for analysis, but also the biological information that is crucial for interpreting the structures in terms of function. The high quality of the St. Jude research community has provided an important impetus for the development of the department and will ensure a bright future for expanding the scope of its research projects. Important collaborations have already been established with a number of groups in other departments. An emerging area of interest is structure-assisted drug design, and the department anticipates close collaborations with members of the new Department of Chemical Biology and Therapeutics.
The department has made an important commitment to teaching and mentoring graduate students at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) in Memphis. All of our faculty members have adjunct appointments within the Molecular Sciences Department at UTHSC, and are members of the UTHSC College of Graduate Health Sciences. Faculty members take an active part in teaching graduate courses, and oversee a course in physical biochemistry. Several UTHSC graduate students are being trained in our department, and a number have already graduated with PhD degrees.
The Department of Structural Biology at St. Jude is chaired by Stephen White, DPhil.
