Research activity in the Biomolecular and Structural Chemistry Group includes chemical crystallography with structure elucidation of small organic compounds, protein crystallography of proteins and their macromolecular complexes and structural biology by biophysical and biochemical methods to dynamic structure-function relation studies of biologically active macromolecules.
Structural studies of macromolecules is the largest activity; small molecule crystallography and a broader range of chemical and physical properties are also included. X-ray crystallography is the main experimental technique used for both chemical and macromolecular structure determination. Activities cover the full range of techniques from cloning of genes to structure determination by crystallographic techniques, and structure-function relation studies by biophysical and biochemical methods, computational biology and bioinformatics.
The Biomolecular and Structural Chemistry Group is, together with the Molecular Biosystems and Bioinformatics Group, currently the host of the Norwegian Structural Biology Centre (NorStruct), a national technology platform founded by the programme in functional genomics (FUGE) in the Research Council of Norway (RCN), and a node of the national crystallography platform NorCryst. A major part of the activity in the group is connected to NorStruct.
The group is also involved in a variety of interdisciplinary projects, with a particular responsibility for the structural determination of biological macromolecules in applied and basic research projects.
Structure-function relation studies of biologically active macromolecules have been developed as the main research profile of the structural chemistry research group. The thematic research areas are not rigidly defined, but can be grouped into four broad areas:
