EPSRC Funded Projects

•    A consortium of UK researchers, in collaboration with Grenoble staff, are undertaking a number of well-defined projects of high biological interest. Each project will use neutron scattering/NMR methods to obtain unique structural information. Deuterium labelling is central to each project and each exploits the capacity of the DLAB within the ILL/EMBL at Grenoble. This laboratory, which has strong core funding from the ILL, was awarded a major EU RTD grant for the development of deuteration techniques and is now an obvious base for the work we propose. 

Scientific activity linking biological applications at Grenoble with Oxford University facilities at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in the UK have been developed.  A major objective is to expand good scientific interaction between the UK science programmes at ILL and RAL. The involvement of Professor A. Watts in this application is therefore highly significant. As a Senior Scientist at ISIS, and as Director of the National Biological Solid State NMR Facility, his group interacts with staff at the ILL deuteration laboratory to facilitate exchange of expertise between the two facilities and to provide a connection between ISIS users and the deuteration laboratory. Furthermore there is an initiative at RAL/ISIS to develop a deuteration capability there for the labelling of small biomolecules, complementing the capabilities that exist at the ILL-ELBL Deuteration Laboratory and at Oxford.

•    A science-led programme within the deuteration laboratory in support of biological neutron scattering and NMR has been initiated. The aim of the deuteration laboratory itself is to provide users with the facilities and expertise that will enable them to produce deuterated macromolecules on a far more routine basis than is currently possible. The cost of running this facility on a “per project” basis is relatively modest, and it will pay large dividends in the quality and scope of the biological work that it enables. Quite apart from their own scientific merits, the UK-based projects we propose here also stimulate a science-led ethos and in-house activity within the laboratory that we believe will make a crucial contribution to effective user support. This objective will again be strongly reinforced by the activity arising from the EU RTD project.