Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics Laboratory Journal 2001 Preface

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Preface

This is the 30^th edition of the Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics Annual Report. It describes activities in the Laboratory during the period August 2000 to August 2001. Contributions are listed in alphabetical order by the group leaders name.

This year our senior staff complement has remained stable and we have no new members. However there have been some leavers with a number of new distinguished appointments. We congratulate Kim Watson on her appointment as Reader in Structural Biology at the University of Reading, an appointment that she took up on 1st October 2001. Haiwei Song left in the summer to take up a new appointment as Professor of Structural Biology at the University of Singapore. Matthew Bowler, who had done fine service both in the office and at the bench, completed his MSc and has joined John Walker's Laboratory in Cambridge for his PhD. Guy Coates is pursuing his career in computing having served most ably as deputy to our Director of Computing for 15 months. Tomas Sorensen returned to Denmark to take up an appointment at the Department of Molecular and Structural Biology, University of Aarhus.

The major new development this year has been an expansion of large scale computing activities where Mark Sansom has played a leading role in both a high performance computing project and an E-science project.

The research of the Laboratory encompasses a range of biological problems for each of which we seek a structural understanding. The topics include membrane proteins (ion channels and transporters), cell cycle regulatory proteins, drug target enzymes and structure based drug design, the proteins of the complement system and host pathogen interactions, the proteins of the stress induced response in prokaryotes, the proteins of the immune response and apoptosis, signalling at the extracellular matrix, and photoreceptor proteins. The Laboratory has widened its experimental base in recent years. We now have groups with expertise in protein crystallography, molecular dynamics, structural bioinformatics, NMR and electron microscopy in addition to the basic tools of protein expression, purification and characterisation.

The Laboratory Report is not a formal publication and permission to reproduce material should be sought from the authors.

Last year I was on Sabbatical leave. I thank Mark Sansom for ably taking on the responsibilities of Acting Head of Laboratory. Finally I should like to thank Richard Bryan, Jane Thorp and Stephen Lee for their work in preparing the report. It is always immensely rewarding to see the work of the Laboratory brought together.

Louise N. Johnson
February 2002

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