Structural biology is central to all biomolecular sciences such as biochemistry, biomedicine, pharmacology, biology and biophysics. With it we can tackle critical societal challenges within medicine, pharmaceuticals and sustainability, including e.g. developing new drug molecules or engineering novel enzymes for green chemistry. We will invest in two critical areas, cryogenic electron microscopy and native mass spectrometry, that will improve sample purity and characterization in structural biology pipelines in the national (FINStruct) and international services for Finnish structural biology (Instruct-ERIC FI). The results will go into heavily used, free, open databases e.g. the worldwide Protein Data Base where structures were downloaded nearly three billion times in 2022. Apart from the impact in the societal challenges mentioned already, we will also contribute to education and outreach activities, promoting understanding of how research helps e.g. in development of drugs.

2024

2025