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£4 Million for New Centres for Structural Biology

February 01, 1999

The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) today announces its intention to fund four more UK Centres for Structural Biology.

The new Centres, which represent a total investment by BBSRC of £4M over the coming years, will be:

Cambridge and East Anglia Centre (£1.3M over five years)

CLRC Daresbury Laboratory (£0.4M over three years)

Imperial College Centre (£1M over five years)

North of England Centre (£1.3M over four years)

This brings to six, the number of Centres established by BBSRC as part of its framework of support for structural biology in the UK, and completes the Council's plans for a portfolio of specialist Centres, announced in 1997, and launched last year with Centres at University College London/Birkbeck College and the University of York.

BBSRC support is for staff and running costs at the Centres, a strategy which the Council believes will be an important new factor in capitalising on existing expertise and experience, and one that will accelerate the progress of research.

Each Centre already receives extensive research grant funding from BBSRC and other funding organisations.

A major consideration has been the identification of Centres that together provide a complementary portfolio of state-of-the-art equipment, research and training facilities and expertise, and that will provide easy access for the UK research community. In addition, each centre is a world leader in particular thematic areas of structural biology (see table).

"These Centres, in which we are investing over £6.5M in total, will be an important resource that will help to keep UK scientists amongst the world leaders in a rapidly advancing and internationally competitive area of research", says BBSRC Chief Executive, Professor Ray Baker FRS. "In selecting the Centres, we have placed considerable emphasis on the opportunities they provide for co-operation and multidisciplinary collaboration between research groups, and for innovative links with industrial partners."

The six BBSRC Centres are:

Centre	Major Specialist Facilities	Director	Major Scientific Themes
UCL/Birkbeck College Centre for Structural Biology London	X-ray crystallography Bioinformatics	Professor Janet Thornton	DNA damage, recognition, repair and signalling Chaperones and protein trafficking Molecular interactions at cell surfaces Signal transduction Membrane proteins Protein structure, molecular recognition and design
Cambridge & East Anglia Centre for Structural Biology	X-ray crystallography NMR	Professor Sir Tom Blundell FRS	Structural biology of cell signalling in animals, plants and microbes
Centre for Protein and Membrane Structure and Dynamics (CLRC Daresbury Laboratory)	Circular Dichroism	Dr Gareth Jones	Protein folding and dynamics
Imperial College Centre for Structural Biology, London	Electron microscopy	Professor Marin van Heel	Protein synthesis Membrane proteins Structural basis of infection Supramolecular structures
North of England Structural Biology Centre	NMR Electron microscopy X-ray crystallography	Professor Simon Phillips	Protein/nucleic acid interactions Membrane proteins Protein folding and assembly Molecular recognition and catalysis
Structural Biology at York	Molecular Modelling X-ray crystallography	Professor Rod Hubbard	Transcription complexes Molecular interactions Multi-component enzyme systems Molecular modelling

The performance of each Centre will be monitored annually by the Biomolecular Sciences Committee, which is jointly sponsored by BBSRC and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and administered by BBSRC.

The Centres are part of BBSRC's portfolio of support mechanisms for structural biology in the UK. This includes project funding at universities and institutes throughout the UK through responsive mode grants (about £15M each year), and the internationally acclaimed Oxford Centre for Molecular Sciences (£1M per year), which is also funded by EPSRC and the Medical Research Council.

For further information contact:
Technical:
Dr Colin Miles
Biomolecular Sciences Committee
BBSRC
Tel: 01793 413359
Fax: 01793 413234
E-mail:mailto:colin.miles@bbsrc.ac.uk">colin.miles@bbsrc.ac.uk

Press:
Ms Natasha Martineau
Publicity Manager
BBSRC
Tel: 01793 413301
Fax: 01793 413382
E-mail: natasha.martineau@bbsrc.ac.uk
mailto:natasha.martineau@bbsrc.ac.uk">natasha.martineau@bbsrc.ac.uk

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)

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