Systems Biology/Computational Biology Facilities

EMBL Hamburg has established a fully automated platform for the high-throughput crystallization of biological macromolecules in order to address a common bottleneck in x-ray crystallography. The SPC crystallisation platform offers a wide range of crystallisation screening conditions and flexible methods have been developed to adapt each step to individual project requirements. The services are available to the general user community. Our crystallisation platform supports both nanodrop crystallisation and lipidic cubic phase (LCP) crystallisation. All plates can be imaged in one of our Rockimaker 1000 imagers (4º or 19 ºC) and images accessed off-site through CRIMS. The facility is well supported with two Mosquito-LCP at room temperature. Custom screens can be formulated using automated dispensing robots. Moreover, our Molecular Biophysics platform offers one of the most-well equipped biophysical laboratories in Europe. We support users with the design, execution and data analysis of biophysical experiments aimed at the characterization of proteins, protein complexes and interactions between proteins and other types of molecules. The characterization of these structures are analysed by studying parameters such as stability, shape, folding state, aggregation tendency, homogeneity and oligomeric states. The interactions in which they are involved can be followed by measuring biophysical criteria like; specificity, kinetics, affinity, and thermodynamics.