Research Facilities

The School of Crystallography has excellent research facilities for structural molecular biology and industrial materials science, which are organised into the following laboratories:

Rosalind Franklin Molecular Biology Laboratory

Academic Head of Laboratory:	Dr. Renos Savva
Laboratory Manager:	Dr. Stella Geddes


Facilities:

• Polymerase Chain Reaction
• Electrophoresis and blotting
• Video gel-imaging and computerised image-scanning
• Bacterial cell-culture and fermentation
• Benchtop, superspeed and ultracentrifugation
• Chromatography
• Microscope




Rayne and Wolfson Laboratory

Academic Head of Laboratory:	Dr. Christine Slingsby
Laboratory Manager:	Dr. Bob Sarra


Facilities:

• Mass spectrometry
• Peptide synthesis
• Dynamic light scattering
• Chromatography




X-ray Laboratory

Academic Head of Laboratory:	Dr. Ajit Basak
Academic Assistant:	Dr. Claire Naylor
Laboratory Manager:	Martin Hunt


The X-ray Laboratory has two data collection facilities for macromolecular diffraction experiments, only one of which is currently in use. Both systems are equipped with 30cm MAR Imaging Plates mounted on an MSC Rigaku Rotating Anode generators, and with state-of-the-art Osmic Confocal MaxFlux Mirrors, and with Oxford Cryosystems Cryostream coolers. 




Electron Microscopy Laboratory

Academic Head of Laboratory:	Prof. Helen Saibil
Laboratory Manager:	Dr. Luchun Wang


The EM laboratory has three transmission EMs with cryo-transfer stages, Tecnai 100 and 120 kV and 200 kV FEG machines, with associated CCD equipment.  There are also facilities for cryo-sample preparation, optical diffraction, image processing and 3-dimensional reconstruction.




Spectroscopy Laboratory

Academic Head of Laboratory:	Dr. Bonnie Wallace
Laboratory Manager:	Dr. Bob Sarra


The Spectroscopy Laboratory has a state-of-the-art Aviv 62DS circular dichroism instrument fitted with a thermally controlled sample chamber, fast scan kinetics, variable position detector (for use with scattering samples such as viruses and membranes), and interfaced to the School's computer network.  In addition we have a Cary UV/Vis scanning spectrophotometer, with software for kinetics and first and second derivative spectra.




Industrial Materials Laboratory

Academic Head of Laboratory:	Dr. Jeremy K. Cockcroft
Laboratory Manager:	Martin Vickers


The Industrial Materials Laboratory has two high-resolution powder diffractometers (a Siemens D500 and a Stoe STADI-P), both equipped with primary beam monochromators.  One diffractometer is optimised for sample characterisation, quantitative analysis, and high-temperature work, while the second is optimised for transmission geometry and low-temperature studies.  In addition, the laboratory is equipped with furnaces and fume cupboards for sample preparation and a computer suite for data analysis.




Computer Laboratory

Manager:	Richard Westlake
Assistant Manager:	Dr. David Houldershaw
Software Support Technician:	Stephen Terrill


An extensive network of Unix and VMS servers and workstations support the School's research activities.  A central file server controls access to the shared disk space, and a number of workstations are dedicated as compute servers, while others are dedicated for real-time interactive graphics work.




Mechanical Workshop

Academic Head of Workshop:	Dr. Huub Driessen
Workshop Manager:	Paul Stukas

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