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How are biological structures formed and maintained? How do these stuctures lead to biological function? These are central questions in biology that date back to the time of Aristotle and beyond. The modern research disciplines of Biochemistry and Biophysics address the same fundamental questions at a molecular level using the tools and principles of chemistry and physics. Research like that carried out in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics shows how the process of evolution operating within the constraints of physical and chemical laws has produced a diverse and beautiful array of structures at every level of biological organization from the whole organism down through the cell to the protein and DNA molecules themselves.
The Department has an exciting and vigorous research program in various areas of biochemistry and biophysics including protein and DNA structure determination, protein folding, protein recognition, enzyme function, protein design and engineering, gene regulation, cell signalling and energy transduction. This research is conducted by 30 primary faculty, 20 adjunct faculty, more than 50 postdoctoral fellows, 95 graduate students and many research technicians. The Department is also home to the Eldridge Reeves Johnson Research Foundation and each year awards the Johnson Foundation Prize for adventurous and innovative research in structural biology.
University of Pennsylvania
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New Faculty
Kristen Lynch has been appointed as Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics and joins the Department on July 1, 2009
On June 1, 2009, Eiko Nagamaru-Ogiso was appointed Research Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics
Ben Black receives a 2009 Rita Allen Foundation Award for his project "Exploring and exploiting epigenetic centromere mechanisms for establishing chromosome stability.
Ben Black, Emily Bassett, and Stacey Wood coauthor a paper in the May 1, 2009 edition of Cell.
On April 19, 2009, Britton Chance received an honorary degree from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in China.
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