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.
In the past few years, the ability to incorporate unnatural amino acids into proteins has begun to have a direct impact on the ability of scientists to study biological processes that are difficult or impossible to address by more classical methods.
New research, led by members of Jason Chin’s group in the LMB’s PNAC Division, has for the first time focused on expanding the genetic code of a complex multicellular organism, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.
New research, resulting from a collaboration between two groups, led by Sarah Teichmann and Madan Babu, in the LMB’s Structural Studies Division, advances our understanding of the interplay between the two most abundant classes of DNA binding proteins that are responsible for regulating physiological diversity in organisms.
A comprehensive investigation of several large-scale datasets, led by M. Madan Babu’s group in the LMB’s Structural Studies Division, provides new insights into tissue-specific splicing – the mechanism responsible for increasing the functional diversity of proteins and for attaining tissue identity during development.
New research, led by Philipp Holliger’s group in the LMB’s PNAC Division, has shed new light on the mechanism by which DNA polymerases – the enzymes responsible for replicating genomes in all animals, fungi and bacteria – are able to ensure faithful DNA replication while actively excluding damaged and/or non-cognate nucleotides from the genome.
A group of researchers, led by Philipp Holliger in the LMB’s PNAC Division, have created the first synthetic molecules that, alongside the natural molecules DNA and RNA, are capable of storing and replicating genetic information.
Vitor Pinheiro and colleagues from Philipp’s group used sophisticated protein engineering techniques to adapt enzymes, that in nature synthesise and replicate DNA, to establish six new genetic systems based on synthetic nucleic acids.
A group of researchers, led by Mario de Bono’s group in the LMB’s Cell Biology division, have extended our understanding of how animals respond to long-term dangers at a molecular level – which may help in explaining how this process fails in a range of human diseases and medical conditions.
Sensory neurons send the brain a barrage of environmental information. Most of these neurons react briefly to short-term stimuli and ignore the stimulus if it persists.