Structural biophysics

Head : Dr Lionel Mourey

 

We study structure-function relationships of biological macromolecules and their complexes using the methods of structural biology, mainly X-ray crystallography. During the 2006-2009 period, our research has mainly been focused on projects of the department of "Molecular Mechanisms of Mycobacterial Infections", still contributing to the area dedicated to the fight against mycobacterial diseases. This includes the structural characterization of drug targets and of lipid antigen presentation. Important efforts were also devoted to the characterization of new protein families and to the study of enzymes of biotechnological interest. Moreover, we have maintained a long-standing collaboration on bacterial pore-forming toxins. Finally, special interest has been recently paid to the development of new strategies for structure-based drug design.

Our expertise covers the different steps required for determining crystal structures of the selected targets and understanding their structure-function relationships: production and purification of recombinant proteins, characterization in solution and crystallization of proteins and their complexes (protein-protein, protein-DNA, protein-ligands), X-ray scattering and diffraction studies, 3D structure determination and analysis. More than twenty proteins have been investigated, two-thirds of which were produced by the group. Thus, there is a continuous concern to maintain state-of-the-art equipment in protein biochemistry and crystallography. We put our expertise and equipments at the disposal of the scientific community through a crystallographic facility, which is now part of the interdisciplinary PICT-IBiSA platform (PICT: "Plateforme Intégrée de Criblage de Toulouse"; IBiSA: "Infrastructures en Biologie Santé et Agronomie", coordination of the research platforms in life sciences).