Track 15 : Structural Biology

Structural biology is a branch of molecular biology, biochemistry, and biophysics concerned with the molecular structure of biological macromolecules, especially proteins and nucleic acids, how they acquire the structures they have, and how alterations in their structures affect their function. Macromolecules carry out most of the functions of cells, and it is only by coiling into specific three ­dimensional  shapes that they are able to perform these functions. The methods that structural biologists use to determine their structures generally involve measurements on vast numbers of identical molecules at the same time.