Biophysics Research

Collision Modern biophysical and biochemical research involves applying quantitative analysis and instrumentation to complex problems in Biology. Training biophysicists and biologists to tackle these problems using a quantitative framework is a major component of the graduate program in Cell, Molecular, Developmental Biology, and Biophysics, with roughly 25 faculty actively engaged in biophysical and biochemical research. This research is supported by facilities on the Homewood campus housing state-of-the-art instrumentation for x-ray crystallography, NMR, molecular hydrodynamics, fluorescence spectroscopy, and biocalorimety. Research in biophysics in CMDB includes studies of Strand with Waterprotein and nucleic acid structure, analysis of macromolecular interactions including protein-ligand, protein-protein and protein-nucleic acid interactions, studies of RNA and protein folding, and structure-based drug design.



Faculty



Douglas Barrick Professor, Department of Biophysics
Determination of an atomic-level description of structure and function in proteins
Gregory Bowman Assistant Professor, Department of Biophysics
Chromatin structure and nucleosome remodeling
Ludwig Brand Professor of The Academy, Department of Biology
Mechanisms and control of protein structure and function with emphasis on the use of fluorescence techniques
Richard Cone Professor, Department of Biophysics
Mucosal immune protection; contraception
David E. Draper Professor, Department of Chemistry
RNA folding, RNA-Protein interactions, ribosome assembly and function
Karen Fleming Associate Professor, Department of Biophysics
Structure, energetics and folding of membrane proteins
Ernesto Freire Professor, Department of Biology
Structure-based thermodynamics of molecular recognition and function
Bertrand Garcia-Moreno Associate Professor, Department of Biophysics
Biophysical chemistry of regulatory interactions in proteins, nucleic acids, and their assemblies
Vincent Hilser Professor, Department of Biology
Protein conformational fluctuations and their role in function, adaptation and disease
Juliette Lecomte Professor, Department of Biophysics
NMR Spectroscopy and protein structure
Elijah Roberts Assistant Professor, Department of Biophysics
Investigating the creation and use of in silico cell models
Joel Schildbach Professor, Department of Biology
Structural biology of bacterial conjugation
Robert Schleif Professor, Department of Biology
Mechanisms of regulation of protein and gene activity
Sarah Woodson Professor, Department of Biophysics
Determination of three dimensional folding of RNA