Structural Biology

Structural biology is a branch of molecular biology, biochemistry, and biophysics concerned with the molecular structure of biological macromolecules, especially proteins and nucleic acids, how they acquire the structures they have, and how alterations in their structures affect their function. This subject is of great interest to biologists because macromolecules carry out most of the functions of cells, and it is only by coiling into specific three-dimensional shapes that they are able to perform these functions. This architecture, the "tertiary structure" of molecules, depends in a complicated way on each molecule's basic composition, or "primary structure."

Branches of Structural Biology

Structural biology is composed of several branches including:

• Crystallography
• NMR spectroscopy
• Cryo-electron microscopy
• Dual polarisation interferometry
• Electron paramagnetic resonance

Techniques

Structural biology involves sequence analysis, methods to detect and predict three-dimensional structure from protein sequences, and wide array of methods to present or predict protein function based on structure.

See Also

• Molecular biology
• Biochemistry
• Biophysics
• Protein structure
• Nucleic acid structure

References

Structural Biology Resources
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