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 and research training in the areas of molecular structure determination combining experimental approaches (x-ray crystallography) with computation methods (molecular modeling, computational chemistry and bioinformatics).
Our research nearly always involves close collaboration with experimental research groups. The laboratory has extensive ongoing studies on protein-ligand interactions and development of computational methods and programs for structural bioinformatics. SBL is part of the joint Drug development and diagnostics research profiling area of the University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University.
Principal investigators
Professor |
Professor |
Adjunct Professor |
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 of Biocenter Finland Infrastructure Networks. The services are usually offered as collaboration or consultation, targeted for all bioresearchers on the Turku campus and for national and international user. Our focus is on structural bioinformatics, protein structure determination, and IT support for high volume data producers such as bioimaging.
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 Centre for Biotechnology, who provide services in the analysis of microarray and deep sequencing data.
Structural biology facilities:
We provide facilities for protein structure determination including protein purification, crystallization, and pre-screening, and can use European synchrotron resources for protein crystallography. SBL is also part of Turku node of the Finnish Instruct National Affiliate Centre (TURKU Instruct-NAC) that provides a platform to facilitate protein structure studies and bioinformatics analysis.
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