Structural Bioinformatics Laboratory (SBL) has a unique combination of expertise where the independent groups have formed a tight network, sharing the research facilities and infrastructure. The emphasis is on multidisciplinary research aiming to solve complex biological problems related to protein structure and function, molecular interactions, and gene/protein evolution. In addition, there is very strong emphasis on education, research training and providing infrastructure in the areas of molecular structure determination combining experimental approaches (X-ray crystallography and cryo-EM) with computation methods (AI-based and comparative modeling, computational chemistry, and bioinformatics) and biophysical characterization of proteins and their interactions. Our research often involves close collaboration with other research groups.
The laboratory has extensive ongoing studies on molecular mechanism of protein function and development of computational methods and programs for structural bioinformatics. SBL is part of the Solutions for Health research profile of Åbo Akademi University (ÅAU) and the joint Drug development and diagnostics research profiling area of the University of Turku and ÅAU.
Principal investigators
Professor, Head of Subject Cluster for Biochemistry and Cell Biology |
Senior University Lecturer, Pharmacy |
Professor emeritus, Biochemistry |
SBL regularly hosts visiting researchers and undergraduate and postgraduate students. If you are interested in doing an internship in one of the SBL teams, please contact the PI.
Services and expertize
SBL is a technology platform service providing member Biocenter Finland Infrastructure Networks of FINStruct (Structural Biology), Bioinformatics and Drug Discovery and Chemical Biology.
The services are targeted for all bioresearchers on the Turku campus and for national and international user. Our focus is on protein structure determination, structural bioinformatics, computer-aided drug design, and IT support for high volume data producers such as bioimaging. We are also part of Turku Protein Core.
Services in structural bioinformatics include prediction of protein 3D structures, identification of structurally similar proteins, prediction of sequence-structure-function relationships, analysis of protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions, small molecule databases and in silico screening, and molecular simulations. An extensive set of software tools and databases are in use, including in consortia with the CSC. We collaborate with Turku Bioscience Centre, who provides services in the analysis of microarray and deep sequencing data.
Structural biology and protein science facilities:
We provide facilities for protein structure determination including protein purification, crystallization, pre-screening and structure solutions as BioCity Turku node of FINStruct network belong to InFLAMES infrastructures and use European synchrotron resources for protein crystallography.
Detailed list of Structural biology facilities with contact information.
Data storage and archiving, hardware and software support and facilities:
We provide secure data storage and archival to the BioCity community, for large data sets and small ones. We collaborate with CSC, the Finnish IT Center for Science, on how to exploit the ELIXIR EU program in order to help support the infrastructure in Turku.
Detailed list of IT facilities with contact information.
Software
SBL is a member of
- BioCenter Finland infrastructure networks
- BioXLabs Biological Crystallography Laboratories; Instruct-NAC
- NordForsk Nordic Network in Biological Informatics