ABOUT US

The Protein Crystallography Group at Rome (PCG@Rome) started in the Department of Biochemical Sciences, when Demetrius Tsernoglou was called as full professor of Enzymology in 1995. The purpose of this endeavor was marked with the publication of a pamphlet which outlined the background of the problem and the strategy shared by all members of the Department. The PCG@Rome was the natural evolution of classical and very successful studies on the structure, function and evolution of proteins, started by Prof. A. Rossi Fanelli and his school since the late fifties. The integration of this initiative with the activities of the Institute for Molecular Biology and Pathology of the CNR and collaborations with several prestigious Institutions including the Istituto Pasteur-Fondazione Cenci Bolognetti, have provided a fundamental synergy.


Several projects are currently being pursued in the field of Structural Biology, Biomedicine, Biotechnology and Biophysics. Some of these are the natural expansion of research lines pre-existing in the Department, while others stem from collaborations with other Departments within "La Sapienza", the largest and top-rating University in Italy. A crucial element of success has been the development of qualified collaborations with other Institutions in Italy and abroad.

One of the activities of PCG@Rome is the training of Graduate (PhD Courses in Biochemistry, in Biophysics and in Sciences Pasteuriennes) and Undergraduate Students, mainly from Italy but also from other Countries. Many foreign Scientists joined the group as Postdoctoral Fellows or Visiting Professors.
Since 1998 we have solved more than 20 new structures and deposited 60 sets of coordinates in the PDB; over the last five years, we have published 39 papers as an output of protein structural studies.


The PCG@Rome is well equipped, with a robot for protein crystallization, a state-of-the-art in-house generator and detector, extensive computational facilities and instrumentation for medium-scale production of recombinant proteins. The Department of Biochemical Sciences is endowed with state-of-the-art equipment (mass-spec, spectroscopy, stopped-flow, calorimetry etc) for biochemical and biophysical characterization of proteins. Collaborations with groups in other Departments. of "La Sapienza" (Chemistry, Pharmacology, Molecular Biology, Plant Biology, ecc) expand the opportunities for a widespread approach of Structural Biology.


Data acquisition is largely by use of Synchrotron beam time, at the European Synchrotron Radiation Source in Grenoble (ESRF)  as a Batch Allocation Group (BAG), and at Elettra (Trieste, Italy) and BESSY (Berlin, GE), with monthly measurements sessions. Thanks to the support of these European Institutions, beam time is not a limiting factor.