Biological Macromolecules & Crystallography Platform

The Biotechnology Unit has extensive know-how on the production of soluble and membrane bound proteins in heterologous expression systems for structural and functional studies and is a member of the INSPIRED research infrastructure.

The currently available expression systems include bacterial, yeast, insect & mammalian cell systems. Large-scale production of proteins expressed in yeast and bacteria cells can be conducted in the fermenter unit.

Expressed recombinant proteins are purified through affinity, size exclusion or ion exchange chromatography, using FPLC systems.

The purified proteins can be subjected to crystallization in our crystallization robot. Data collection is carried out in synchrotron facilities, where HPI routinely acquires access and funding via the iNext-Discovery platform (https://inext-discovery.eu/). Structure determination and analysis is performed using standard crystallographic software (XDS, CCP4, Phenix, Coot etc.)