CPMSD Circular Dichroism Facility Home Page

Centre for Protein and Membrane Structure and Dynamics

CPMSD Home Page

The next CPMSD Annual Meeting and Workshop will be on the 15th and 16th September 2005

Click here for the provisional meeting programme.

To download a registration form please click here.

A CD Summer School is also being held at Warwick University, to coincide with the CPMSD meeteing.
Application form available here.

The Centre for Protein and Membrane Structure and Dynamics (CPMSD) is one of only six Structural Biology Centres established by the BBSRC as part of its framework of support for structual biology in the UK. This will be a virtual centre linking UK researchers who use ultraviolet circular dichroism.

The Director of the centre is Prof Bonnie Wallace of the Department of Crystallography, Birkbeck College.

The heart of the centre is a new beamline on the Synchrotron Radiation Source at CLRC Daresbury Laboratory for the collection of rapid kinetic and steady state vacuum-ultraviolet and deep-ultraviolet CD spectra. This beamline provides many orders of magnitude more photon flux than conventional CD instruments. The advantages of Synchrotron Radiation as a light source for CD have been demonstrated by data from the existing facilities on the SRS, and the new station will allow the full exploitation of SRCD for the first time

The CD data obtained from the new facility will provide information on, for example:

How proteins fold, misfold, and are correctly refolded, both in the presence and absence of chaperonins.

Protein conformation and folding in or at the surfaces of membranes.

The mutual changes in secondary and tertiary structure that occur when proteins and peptides interact with each other and with other macromolecules.

Environmental effects on the structures of proteins and peptides.

The CPMSD is headed by a consortium of researchers from UK universities and CCLRC:

Dr Gareth Jones, SR Department, CLRC Daresbury Laboratory (Assistant Director Life Science Programmes).

Prof Bonnie Wallace, Department of Crystallography, Birkbeck College, University of London.

Prof Nick Price, Division of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Glasgow (Director of the BBSRC Scottish Circular Dichroism Facility).

Dr Alison Rodger, Department of Chemistry, University of Warwick.

The facility is operated by the Spectroscopy and Imaging group at Daresbury.

In addition to the beamline, the Centre will include a bioinformatics development programme, with the objective of improving communication within the UK CD community, and developing techniques for the analysis of CD data. The CPMSD will:

Establish SRCD as an accessible and key structural biology technique.

Co-ordinate the work of the three national CD facilities (Glasgow, King's College, and Daresbury).

Provide a forum for the dissemination of information on CD.

Provide up-to-date CD analysis programs, and databases of high quality CD spectra.

Run an annual UK CD users meeting on new developments in techniques and results.

Construction of the new beamline is underway, and updates will be posted on the 'news' page. Anyone who would like more information should contact any of the above consortium members.

Hits since October 2000:

Spectroscopy and Imaging Home Page SRS Home Page CCLRC Home Page

Last update 7th July 2005