Platform leader

Professor Arne O. Smalås, Department of Chemistry, University of Tromsø.

Organization

NorStruct is hosted by the University of Tromsø

Vision and aims

NorStruct is a national research and service centre in structural biology. A large fraction of research in biology and medicine are dealing with understanding macromolecules and molecular interactions, and since function is determined by the 3D-structure, structural studies becomes central. Structural biology aims at understanding life at molecular and atomic levels.

The impor­tance of the 3D structures is increasing in basic research fields such as func­tional genomics, systems biology, metabolomics and in virtually all areas where whole systems of interacting partners are studied. Similarly, applied research areas such as protein engineering and drug discovery rely on details that can be obtained only through atomic resolution structures.

Technology and services

NorStruct offers state of the art services and collaboration in structural biology techniques to the Norwegian research community. High quality expertise and services will be assured via in-house research projects and national and international partnerships. The services are organized in three different service packages (SP’s), whereby the services ordered are tailored to the customer’s specific needs. The three SP’s will be “Protein production” (SP1), “Structure determination” (SP2), and “Drug discovery and design” (SP3).

PhD schools

As a national competence centre NorStruct has also been given extensive responsibility for recruitment of scientists within structural biology. NorStruct is administrating both a local and a national graduate school within structural biology: MSB - The PhD school in Molecular and Structural Biology (Tromsø) and BioStruct - The national graduate school in Structural Biology.

BioStruct is granted by NFR for 8 years and aims to create a scientific network for PhD students within structural biology all over Norway. The research school is a collaboration between 5 universities (UiT -host institution, NTNU, UiB, UiO and UMB). The main focus is to establish new national PhD courses, both methodical and thematic courses, grant research visits and to organize conferences in the field of Structural Biology.

Contact information

Homepage NorStruct

E-mail: norstruct@chem.uit.no

Address:
Department of Chemistry
University of Tromsø
N-9037 Tromsø

Phone: (+47) 77 64 40 00