EMBO: Practical Course
Training
Date: 24-Jan-2012
Instruct
An Instruct funded course
Course Overview:
This EMBO practical course aims to teach the strategic use of various biochemical and biophysical techniques to facilitate structural studies of macromolecular complexes
The primary focus is on how to produce, purify and characterize multi-subunit protein and protein/nucleic acid complexes for structural analysis.
Topics include:
- expression in bacteria, insect and mammalian cells;
- affinity methods to purify protein components or entire complexes;
- biochemical and biophysical characterization of complexes;
- bioinformatic analysis of interaction networks;
- structural analysis by crystallography, cryo-electron microscopy, NMR, and small angle X-ray/neutron scattering.
Emphasis will be placed on:
- the latest advances in isolating complexes directly from endogenous sources and in reconstituting complexes from individually purified components;
- techniques for assessing sample quality (homogeneity, stoichiometry, monodispersity);
- combining structure determination methods to obtain a multi-resolution view of a given complex
The course is primarily aimed at Ph.D students and post-docs engaged in challenging projects concerning the structural biology of macromolecular complexes.
