General Information
EMBL is an inter-governmental organisation currently led by the Director General, Prof. Iain Mattaj, appointed by the EMBL Council. The Council is composed of all 20 Member States and one associate member state of the Laboratory. Each member state is represented by up to two delegates, who may be accompanied by advisers. Associate member states have observer status on the EMBL Council and are represented by up to two delegates.
EMBL Grenoble, France, is a laboratory of about 70 people, located in very close proximity to two unique European facilities for research in structural biology: the nuclear reactor of the Institut Laue Langevin (ILL), which provides high flux neutron beams, and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), which produces amongst the world's most intense X-ray beams.
EMBL Grenoble collaborates very closely with both these facilities in building and operating beamlines for macromolecular crystallography, in developing the associated instrumentation and techniques, and in providing biochemical laboratory facilities and expertise to help external visitors making measurements.
Within this exciting context, EMBL Grenoble has a very active in-house research unit in structural biology of cellular processes, making use of a wide range of techniques, including molecular biology, biochemistry, electron microscopy, light scattering, neutron scattering, X-ray crystallography and computing. The availability of such a range of techniques is vital to the success of ambitious projects in modern structural molecular biology, and combined with the neighbouring large-scale facilities, EMBL Grenoble provides an ideal environment for PhD students. There is a strong tradition in studying systems involving protein-nucleic acid complexes on the one hand and viruses on the other hand. Our structural work on aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases is particularly well known. A number of synthetases were first cloned at EMBL Grenoble and various different synthetase structures have been determined including several in complex with cognate tRNA. Studies of protein-RNA interactions have been extended to the mammalian signal recognition particle and other proteins involved in translational regulation and RNA transport. The analysis of protein-DNA interactions and mechanisms of transcriptional regulation is another important topic of the Outstation. Structural analysis of eukaryotic transcription factor DNA complexes like the first STAT/DNA complex is now moving towards the analysis of larger complexes involved in transcriptional regulation. Another major focus is the study of RNA viruses, such as influenza, rabies and Ebola, with the aim of understanding how they replicate and assemble. In parallel, studies of the structure and function of proteins involved in viral and cellular membrane fusion is actively pursued (e.g. HIV gp41 and proteins involved in vesicle transport). Some of the projects at EMBL Grenoble depend on close interactions with colleagues at the EMBL Heidelberg Laboratory and collaborations are underway on proteins involved in nucleocytoplasmic transport, translational regulation and RNA metabolism.