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New York Structural Biology Center Receives Grant from the Simons Foundation

On September 9, the NYSBC announced that it had received a grant from the Simons Foundation. The $15 million, 5-year grant, will enable NYSBC to enhance its cryo-electron microscopy facility and will support general operations at the center. The foundation will also provide additional funds to support equipment upgrades in cryo-electron microscopy.

This gift coincides with the news that Bridget Carragher and Clint Potter will be joining the NYSBC on January 1, 2015 to direct the cryo-electron microscopy facility. Carragher and Potter are currently professors at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.

“Jim (Simons) and I are very pleased to provide this support to NYSBC. Together with the arrival of new, outstanding leadership, our gift should enable the center to attain a new level of excellence, enhancing science in the New York City area and elsewhere in the nation,” says foundation president Marilyn Simons.
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NYSBC enables scientists to answer fundamental scientific questions:
Cryo-EM reconstruction of kinesin bound microtubules. Arora, K, et al. (2014) JMB.

The NYSBC is a consortium of nine preeminent academic research institutions that provides advanced resources and tools in structural biology to its members and outside investigators. Founded in 2002, it was the first cooperative research center established in New York, with its main facility in Harlem and a separate facility for X-ray crystallography at the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island.

Structural biologists use several key technologies to determine the three-dimensional structure of molecules and molecular assemblies — information that offers insight into their role in cell behavior and the mechanisms that lead to disease. These technologies include X-ray crystallography, cryo-electron microscopy, and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

At a time when federal funding is scarce, this gift will enable the NYSBC to continue its work and to continue providing state-of-the-art instrumentation and expertise to researchers throughout New York.

“We are enormously grateful to the Simons Foundation for this grant.” says Chairman of the Board David Hirsh. “It enables the NYSBC to stay in the forefront of rapid advances in structural biology that promise to transform our understanding of disease mechanisms and lead to more sophisticated therapeutics.”

Reposted from NYSBC website. Click here to see the original.