MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
One of the world's leading research institutes, our scientists are working to advance understanding of biological processes at the molecular level - providing the knowledge needed to solve key problems in human health.
Marta Shahbazi’s group in the LMB’s Cell Biology Division has developed a three-dimensional embryonic stem cell culture system to study the molecular motivations behind basal delamination where cells change shape and move from their tissue of origin.
Chun Hao Wong and Simon Bullock, from the LMB’s Cell Biology Division, together with Douglas Ross-Thriepland and colleagues at AstraZeneca, have systematically disrupted every gene in cultured human cells to reveal a large number of new factors required for organisation of cells by the microtubule motor dynein.
John-Poul Ng-Blichfeldt and Katja Röper, in the LMB’s Cell Biology Division, have collaborated with Julie Williams from AstraZeneca, to use renal organoids to investigate the human mesenchymal-to-epithelial transition, crucial to the morphogenesis of kidneys.
Anne Bertolotti’s group in the LMB Neurobiology Division have revealed the substrate recruitment mechanism of major phosphatase non-catalytic subunit, PPP1R15B, by using full-length eIF2 and a combination of approaches.
Time-resolved study of in vitro assembly of truncated tau by the groups of Sjors Scheres and Michel Goedert, from the LMB’s Structural Studies and Neurobiology Divisions, identifies formation of many different disease-specific intermediate amyloid filaments.
Structure of the outer kinetochore bound to microtubules, determined by David Barford’s group in the Structural Studies Division, reveals how phosphorylation regulates mitotic spindle chromosome attachment errors to ensure DNA is equally segregated into two daughter cells.