Karl Kjer - Achievements and Challenges of the Science of Structure Biology

KarlKjer defines this article to introduce the achievement that structural biology has gained, as well as the challenges it is now facing with.

Karl Kjer

 

From the history of the development of structural biology, advances in physics have laid the foundation for the breakthrough in structural biology, such as X-ray platform, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and the recent applications of frozen electron microscope. To accurately study the structure of a biological macro-molecule, it should be purified firstly, how about the level of purification? This also depends on the progress of chemical technology, especially the development of some instruments. So it is said structural biology is more than biology. As for crystal process, crystal macro-molecules are only depending on luck. So structural biology is not science any more. However, the material structure determines its function, and it is hard to convince people if we do not explain the phenomena of life structurally. These bottlenecks of this structural biology development cannot be solved by biological progress. It is depending on the physical and chemical development to promote the development of biology. Structural biology has always been an interdisciplinary; it contains a lot of physical and chemical knowledge.

In recent years, the structural biology center of Tsinghua University in China has made rapid progress, which is inseparable from its advanced equipment. The structural biology center of Tsinghua University has carried out a relatively loose cooperation among its related faculties and has led to the development of life and medicine related disciplines. Its goal is to adapt to the ever-increasing demand for life sciences comprehensive talents through the cultivation of compound talents with multidisciplinary background of biology, medicine, chemistry and physics. In this light, physical and chemical promotions and medical progress can meet the demands of structural biology. Of course, the final result is due to the essence of the phenomenon of life. Technology determines the progress of science, which is very prominent in structural biology.

In general, structural biology is very hot nowadays, but it is also very boring. Conventional X-ray diffractometry requires protein crystallization, but many proteins are difficult to crystallize, especially membrane proteins. More complex protein structure of the complex assay is also facing the difficulty of sample preparation. Some promising complex protein structure determination is also faced with the difficulty of sample preparation; another biological problem is the core of biological research. In the past, structural biology is to take a protein measured, even cells. And now it is more and more inclined to some of the more significant determination of the protein complex structure, which is difficult to prepare. With the increase of researchers in this field, good subjects are becoming more and more valuable. After all, structural biology research is mainly to provide further research material or the supplement to the existing research, which however also requires structuralbiologists to have good biologists' literacy. Some questions can be proposed by themselves and explain them using structural analysis. But there are too few people in both capacities.

In short, advanced instrumentation and theoretical methods, as well as highly qualified personnel’s with perseverance and perseverance, are all problems that need to be addressed in structural biology.

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