Biochemistry and Structural Biology
The cores listed below are located at Harvard Medical School, affiliated institutions, or other Harvard Schools.
The BCMP Center for Macromolecular Interactions (CMI) is a resource for the characterization of macromolecules and their interactions. The CMI provides training, scientific consultation, and access to shared biophysical equipment, including: Isothermal Titration Calorimetry (ITC), Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR), Biolayer Interferometry (BLI), MicroScale Thermophoresis (MST), Differential Scanning Fluorimetry (DSF), Circular Dichroism (CD), and Light Scattering methods: size-exclusion chromatography with multi-angle light scattering (SEC-MALS), Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS), and Mass Photometry (MP).
The CMI offers select data collection services for the characterization of protein secondary structure, mass and oligomeric state, polydispersity, aggregation state, hydrodynamic radius, and thermal stability. The CMI also offers nanobody selection services, using the yeast surface display nanobody libraries developed in the lab of Andrew Kruse.
Core Director - Kelly Arnett
Core Website - http://cmi.hms.harvard.edu/
The Harvard Cryo-Electron Microscopy Center for Structural Biology is a joint effort by Harvard Medical School, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Massachusetts General Hospital to provide state-of-the-art cryo-EM instrumentation and expertise for the Harvard structural biology community. This user facility offers consultation and training by staff in specimen preparation, microscope operation, image acquisition, and data analysis. The facility houses two Mark IV Vitrobots for sample preparation and two Titan Krios electron microscopes with BioQuantum energy filters and a Talos Arctica electron microscope, all equipped with Gatan K3 direct electron detectors and Volta phase plates.
Contact email:cryoem@crystal.harvard.edu
Website: https://cryoem.hms.harvard.edu/
Drug Discovery Sciences Core within the HMS Therapeutics Translator provides intellectual input, including chemistry advising and project management, as well as a variety of biochemical and cell-based assays in support of the therapeutics research initiatives of tenant companies within the Blavatnik Life Lab Longwood and the HMS community.
Contacts:
Jennifer Smith (Cellular & biochemical assays and structural biology expertise)
Mark Namchuk (Chemistry advising and project management expertise)
Core Website: https://therapeutics.hms.harvard.edu/translational-research/drug-discovery-sciences-core
SBGrid Consortium provides innovative computational resources, scientific software, and educational programs to researchers in the global structural biology community. We curate a library of 500+ scientific applications to support all phases of macromolecular structure determination with software collections for electron microscopy, X-ray crystallography, NMR, computational chemistry, and structure prediction, and provide access to these tools through a preconfigured software environment.
SBGrid Advanced Research Computing (ARC) provides research computing support to structural biology laboratories in the Boston area, assisting with the design and maintenance of research computing infrastructure, including workstation and server hardware purchase recommendations.
Core Director - Jason Key
Operations Director - Michelle Ottaviano
ARC Website - https://sbgrid.org/corewiki/Home
Consortium Website - https://www.sbgrid.org/
The Molecular Electron Microscopy Suite (MEMS) at Harvard Medical School is a user resource currently available to all researchers in the HMS community. This core facility offers training and supervision in negative-stain and cryo-transmission electron microscopy. Equipment includes three transmission electron microscopes, two cryo plungers, and negative stain and cryo sample preparation areas. The Tecnai F20 is equipped with a Gatan K2 Summit direct electron detector.
Contact email: cryoem@crystal.harvard.edu
Website: https://cryoem.hms.harvard.edu/