Activities at EMBL Hamburg focus on state-of-the-art structural biology methods using synchrotron radiation. The unit is situated on campus of the German Synchrotron Research Centre (DESY), which hosts leading facilities for synchrotron radiation (PETRA-III) and free electron lasers (FLASH and XFEL, under construction).

Facilities and services

EMBL operates a new integrated facility EMBL@PETRA III for applications in structural biology at the PETRA III ring. It comprises three state-of-the-art beamlines: two for macromolecular X-ray crystallography (MX) and one for small angle X-ray scattering of biological samples. These beamlines are complemented by facilities for sample preparation and characterisation and data evaluation. The High-Throughput Crystallisation facility, with a capacity for 10,000 trays, was opened to the research community in 2006. The facilities are available to the research community based on scientific criteria.

Research at EMBL Hamburg

Research is tightly associated with the available synchrotron experiment stations for applications in life sciences. Several projects aim to develop novel technologies to advance methods in structural biology in terms of automation and user friendliness. In addition, faculty members from Hamburg lead a number of research projects to meet grand challenges in structural biology. They include activities on viral replication, transcription factor and regulator complexes, protein kinases, translocation receptors, amino acid biosynthesis pathways. Novel opportunities to make use of the X-ray Free Electron Laser (X-FEL) currently being built on campus are also being explored.