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History of The Sealy Center for Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics

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Structure-based studies of proteins and other biological molecules are a key aspect to understanding the molecular basis for disease, as well as for designing drugs to treat disease. The Sealy Center for Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics (SCSB) was established in 1995 to provide UTMB with state-of-the-art resources for structural and functional studies of biological macromolecules.

However, unlike traditional structural biology centers, whose research efforts are directed almost entirely toward structure determination, SCSB was founded on the principle that the success of structural biology in medical research is predicated on an understanding of how structure is linked to function. Consequently, in addition to traditional research programs that use X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), recruitment in SCSB also included faculty whose expertise cover experimental and theoretical biophysics, as well as computational biology.
Today the SCSB consists of 19 core and 15 associate members (from 5 departments), and the breadth of research spans all aspects of molecular biophysics and biochemistry, addressing such fundamental issues as molecular recognition, signal transduction, allosteric regulation, protein folding, systems biology, and drug design.