King's commemorates opening of new NMR facility with one-day symposium

On Tuesday 4 September the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) facility celebrated the refurbishment of their suite of spectrometers by hosting a one-day symposium.

The day featured talks by several international speakers covering topics of NMR-based research from metabolomics to structural biology as well as highlighting the work of King's PhD students and post-docs. Speakers included Professor Lucia Banci, CERM, University of Florence, Italy who described the contribution of NMR to the description of cellular processes, Professor Art Edison, University of Georgia, USA who discussed new methods for in vivo metabolomics, Professor Mike Shattock, British Heart Foundation Centre of Research Excellence, who gave a talk titled 'The Salt of the Earth: NMR studies of Na elevation and metabolic dysfunction in heart failure' and Dr Martin Blackledge, Institut de Biologie Structurale, who spoke about using NMR to study large-scale protein conformational dynamics.

The day concluded with President & Principal, Professor Ed Bryne unveiling a special art piece commissioned in collaboration with artists to mark the occasion.

(Professor Ed Bryne with representatives from Wellcome Trust, Professor Sasi Conte and British Heart Foundation with the specially commissioned art piece)

The NMR Facility provide King's research scientists with access to state-of-the-art NMR spectrometers equipped to address a range of problems of biological interest. The Facility supports researchers by maintaining a pool of expertise in biomolecular NMR spectroscopy and providing training and assistance as required. The refurbishment of the Facility was supported by generous funding from King's College London, The Wellcome Trust and British Heart Foundation.

Professor Sasi Conte, Director of the NMR Facility said of the symposium:

"This enhancement in both capability and capacity will enable the Facility to meet the increasing demand for NMR from an ever-growing body of King's researchers across a range of disciplines, as reflected in the breadth of topics covered in the opening Symposium. We are enormously grateful to the Wellcome Trust, British Heart Foundation, and King's for supporting this initiative."

(The newly refurbished suite of NMR spectrometers)

The NMR Facility complements other biophysical techniques located in the Randall Centre for Cell & Molecular Biophysics (such as X-ray crystallography and microscopy) and in the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (Franklin-Wilkins Building), thus continuing the College's distinguished tradition in biophysics.