Structural Biology Core Facility

Biocenter Oulu offers services and support related to its expertise in protein crystallographic structure determination, protein characterization and ligand screening experiments. The facility is located at the Faculty of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine at the Kontinkangas campus (Aapistie 7C) of University of Oulu.
X-ray Crystallography

Crystallography

The facility hosts instruments to carry out high throughput crystallization experiments in nL volumes, automated imaging instruments to follow crystallizations using an in house developed crystallography data management software and inhouse X-ray diffractometer for crystal testing and data collection.

Characterization and enzymology

The core facility host protein and protein complex characterization tools aimed especially for studying the size and stoichiometry of macromolecular complexes. For enzymology both steady state and pre-steady state kinetics can be measured at the facility.

Ligand screening

Several devices are available for setting up screening experiments in high through put format both for crystallography and for screening assays. Multimodal plate reader can be used for measuring the screening experiments using various techniques at up to 1536-well microplates.

Services

The Structural Biology core facility maintains infrastructure for self use but also provides services on protein characterization, crystallization, and structure determination.

Acknowledgement

The Oulu BCO Instruct-FI infrastructure is supported by funding from Biocenter Finland, Biocenter Oulu, the University of Oulu, FBMM, and regional funding.

We kindly ask the users to acknowledge this resource whenever publications are being finalised, for example: "The use of the facilities and expertise of the Biocenter Oulu Structural Biology core facility, a member of Biocenter Finland, Instruct-ERIC Centre Finland and FINStruct, is gratefully acknowledged."

In addition we ask the users to inform us (i) whenever such publications have been accepted for publication and (ii) of the PDB entry codes whenever structures have been deposited.

Contact persons

Primary contact address:

sbcore (at) unioulu.oulu.fi

Responsible scientists for the core facility:

Professor Lari Lehtiö

tel. +358-(0)294 481169 (office F103)

e-mail: lari.lehtio (at) oulu.fi

Professor emeritus Rik Wierenga

tel. +358-(0)294 481199 (office F202B)

e-mail: rik.wierenga (at) oulu.fi

Senior scientist Tiila Kiema (data collection)

tel. +358-(0)294 481174 (office F210)

e-mail: tiila.kiema (at) oulu.fi

Senior scientist Kristian Koski

(remote data collection, courses, DLS, SLS, protein purification)

tel. +358-(0)294 481174 (office F210)

e-mail: kristian.koski (at) oulu.fi

Technical staff:

Ville Ratas (crystallization)

tel. +358-(0)294 481174 (office F210)

e-mail: ville.ratas (at) oulu.fi

Ed Daniel (computing, IceBear)

tel. +358-(0)294 481151 (office F126B)

e-mail: edward.daniel (at) oulu.fi