Professor Ray Owens, who leads Protein Production UK for The Franklin, says: “There is an unprecedented level of team-work and collaboration globally to image, understand, and treat COVID-19. We are working with colleagues at the University of Oxford to use the nanobodies developed here at The Franklin, to gain insights into the structure of the virus that causes COVID-19”
The Rosalind Franklin Institute is a new national research institute, funded by UK Research and Innovation through the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Its mission is to develop and apply disruptive new technologies in the physical and engineering sciences to transform the UK’s life science research and pharma sector.
About Protein Production UK
Protein Production UK (PPUK) is a project hosted by The Rosalind Franklin Institute in partnership with Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron light source, (www.diamond.ac.uk), and is tasked with devising new ways to deliver ‘the right sample, at the right time, for the right experiment’. This involves improving existing technology and developing new methods, that will, enable the structural biology community to keep pace with the rapidly expanding range of tools available for analysis, using X-rays and electrons.
PPUK has established the nanobody discovery platform in The Franklin’s Structural Biology Theme, and the rapid production of these reagents for Covid 19 work by PPUK is proof of the strategic importance of such a facility in the UK.
PPUK is currently based at the Research Complex at Harwell www.rc-harwell.ac.uk
Diamond Light Source have created a page dedicated to their world leading research on COVID-19 – https://www.diamond.ac.uk/covid-19.html.
More information about Structural Biology Facilities across Europe focused on research into Covid 19 is available on https://instruct-eric.eu/covid19.