Publications | Diamond News Spring 2010

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Research Complex Opens for Business

With the new Research Complex at Harwell (RCaH) now built and open for business, there is a real sense of excitement as researchers start to move in. The Research Complex offers multidisciplinary laboratory space that provides facilities for researchers to undertake new and cutting edge scientific research in both life and physical sciences and at the interface between them.

Research Complex
The Research Complex

As the complexity of the experiments being proposed by the users of Diamond, ISIS and the Central Laser Facility increases, the Research Complex’s importance will come to the fore. Transforming users’ programmes by giving them access to wellequipped facilities for sample preparation and characterisation, both before and after analysis. Experience at other synchrotrons around the world has shown that research facilities close to the source have allowed visiting and resident research teams to achieve remarkable advances, benefiting from close collaboration from the beamline scientists and the other technical experts at the facility.

The focus of the research programmes that will benefit from being located in the Research Complex will include major and challenging areas that can best be addressed by being close to the facilities on site. These include structural studies on membrane proteins; high throughput functional structural genomics related to disease and enzyme mechanisms; biological imaging; catalysis; drug development and delivery; matter under extreme conditions; chemical processing; surface and nanoscience; and energy research.

Funding for access is available via all the sponsors, namely Diamond, BBSRC, EPSRC, MRC, NERC and STFC. More details can be found on the Research Complex website under Access and Funding. EPSRC is currently calling for outline proposals to carry out multidisciplinary research at the Research Complex. This will provide flexible underpinning funding so that a number of research groups can establish a “home from home” at RCaH. £5 million is available through this call and the EPSRC expect to fund 3-4 grants. The closing date is 4pm on the 22nd April 2010 and full details about applying can be found on the EPSRC website.

Life scientists have been swift to seize on the opportunity to head for Harwell. The Oxford Protein Production Facility (OPPF) has relocated from Oxford to the Research Complex and, thanks to a funding boost from the MRC and BBSRC, it is establishing a national resource centre, the OPPF-UK. The facility is focused on the high-throughput production of proteins and protein crystals.

Dr Ray Owens, OPPF-UK Project Manager, explains more about the new development:

“The creation of the original OPPF was a response to the vital research requirement for a high-throughput protein production and crystallization facility in the UK. We now want to develop the services we provide to the UK academic community by establishing a national facility that will offer free access to our technology platforms. Some prioritisation of the work we undertake will be necessary, so a review board will be established to select projects most likely to benefit from the OPPF-UK, similar to the access model for synchrotron beamlines. We will also be actively encouraging researchers to visit the OPPF-UK and make use of the facilities themselves.”

Dr Ray Owens, OPPF-UK Project Manager

To date, OPPF technologies have contributed to solving over 130 new protein structures. Targets are human proteins and those of human pathogens, both viral and bacterial, selected for their direct biomedical relevance.

For more information on the OPPF visit the OPPF website.

For further details and queries, you can email oppf-enquiries@strubi.ox.ac.uk

For enquiries relating to the Research Complex, please contact: tel: +44 (0) 1235 567700 e-mail: enquiries@rc-harwell.ac.uk