About the Bloomsbury Centre

The Bloomsbury Centre for Structural Biology (BCSB) was established in 1998 to be a leading academic centre for translating gene sequences to protein structure and function. The BCSB was one of six Centres for Structural Biology to be funded by the BBSRC (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council) and was founded on a partnership between the following University of London departments:

Research Department of Structural and Molecular Biology, UCL
Department of Biological Sciences, Birkbeck

The aim of the BCSB has been to elucidate key biological mechanisms and to identify and characterise novel targets for drug discovery. The BCSB is a multidisciplinary centre for structural biology that concentrates expertise for the benefit of the broader research community. The BCSB has been very sucessful in implementing a coordinated and dynamic approach to 3D structure determination of biological macromolecules. Extensive collaborations have taken place between structural biologists, biologists in life sciences and a range of scientists and clinicians.

The Centre provides all the necessary expertise and facilities for determining and analysing the sequences and 3D structures of biologically important molecules and brings together many internationally competitive research groups with excellence in the core technologies of structural biology, including molecular biology and biochemistry, crystallography, modelling and bioinformatics, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and electron microscopy (EM). In addition there is access to enabling technologies for example, mass spectrometry, electronic spectroscopy, ultracentrifugation and optical spectroscopy.

Collaboration

Researchers at Birkbeck and UCL have superb experience in structural investigation techniques including cryo electron microscopy, X-ray crystallography, and NMR. If you have a project that would benefit from structural biology and are interested in collaborating through the BCSB you should contact the ISMB Administrator in the first instance, providing the following useful information:

- The type of collaboration/project
- A brief background to the research
- Whether there is a particular researcher that you wish to collaborate with.

BCSB Director | Professor Helen Saibil

Postal address
Bloomsbury Centre for Sructural Biology
School of Crystallography
Birkbeck College
University of London
Malet Street
London, WC1E 7HX
UK

BCSB Web resources

* Bioinformatics

BCB website

Annotated website of bioinformatics resources

Genome database of naturally occurring plasmids

Protein structure and modelling group

CATH


* Molecular Biology


* NMR