Institution: IBPM
Departement: DSB
Typology: Academic collaboration, Facility, Industrial collaboration, Skill
Location: Biocrystal Facility (part of the ITACA.SB platform)
Contacts:
- Andrea Ilari (andrea.ilari@cnr.it)
- Adele Di Matteo (adele.dimatteo@cnr.it)
Description:
The Biocrystal facility, a large multidisciplinary laboratory established at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Pathology (IBPM) of CNR, in collaboration with the Biochemistry Department of Sapienza University aims at supporting the Italian scientists and the pharmaceutical companies in the research to find new drug and vaccine against the endemic and epidemic diseases through structure-based drug design. The Biocrystal facility is part of the ITACA.SB INFRASTRUCTURE financed by the Mission 4 / Education and Research Component 2: from research to business, Investment 3.1: Fund for the realisation of an integrated system of research and innovation infrastructures. The main Biocrystal Facility expertise are the following: recombinant proteins construct design through bioinformatics platforms; protein quaternary structure determination and polymerization stateby; high throughput crystallization screening (HTS); users support for beam-time application at the European synchrotron radiation facilities (ELETTRA, ESRF, DIAMOND) for crystal diffraction data set measurements; structure determination using MR, MIR, SIR, MAD, SAD methods; structure determination of big macromolecular complexes (> 100 kDa) by single particle cryo- EM; crystallization of membrane proteins; screening of ligands of biological macromolecules. The facility is equipped with: i) 2 robotic platforms for high-throughput protein, crystallization (Oryx 4 and Oryx 8, Douglas Instruments, both with the Lipidic Cubic Phase Module) allowing for the quick screening of a number of crystallization conditions using very low amounts of protein; ii) microscopes for crystal visualization, iii) tools for crystal manipulation (liquid handler), iv) 3 Cluster nodes for Cryo-EM data analysis; v) Surface Plasmon Resonance, Sartorius (OCTET SF3) for the measurements of the affinity between protein and small molecules vi) Mass photometer for the measurements of protein-protein and protein nucleic acids interactions. You can contact the facility though the portal of INSTRUCT ITALIA: https://www.cerm.unifi.it/instruct-it/pages/biocrystal-facility; or the site: http://biocrystalfacility.it/en/biocrystal-facility/.
Team:
- Cécile Exertier (cecile.exertier@cnr.it)
- Francesca Troilo (francesca.troilo@cnr.it)
- Carmelinda Savino (carmelinda.savino@cnr.it)
- Linda Celeste Montemiglio (lindaceleste.montemiglio@cnr.it)
- Veronica Morea (veronica.morea@cnr.it)
https://www.cerm.unifi.it/instruct-it/pages/biocrystal-facility
Fig.1: Research zoom stereo microscopes equipped with a color digital camera. Fig.2: Crystallization Robot Oryx4 equipped with a lipidic cubic phase module. Fig.3: Surface Plasmon Resonance apparatus (OCTET SF3).