Partners

Partner 13: Architecture et Fonction des Macromolécules Biologiques, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Universities of Provence.

Partner  : Dr Yves Bourne
Deputy: Dr Pascale Marchot

The AFMB laboratory (UMR6098, affiliated to the CNRS, the University of Provence and the and the University of the Mediterranée) is a Structural Biology laboratory, comprising approximately 75 people, of which about 30 hold permanent positions. The research interests of the laboratory include proteins linked to molecular transport and signalling, glycobiology, neurobiology, toxicology and virology.
The laboratory is at the forefront of the emerging high-throughput techniques and has developed an operating structural proteomics platform "from gene to structure", which includes parallel and robotized cloning, expression, purification and crystallization steps of targets of interest using the nanodrop technology. The structure of proteins is studied mainly by means of X-ray crystallography, but also by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), and spectroscopic methods (CD, FTIR, fluorimetry). Upstream and downstream of the structural proteomics platform, the laboratory has developed other skills such as bioinformatics and specialized databases for target selection, and robotics screening of chemical libraries for drug discovery.