BIOCENTRUM AMSTERDAM

BioCentrum Amsterdam is a joint venture of the University of Amsterdam and the Vrije Universiteit. Its goals are both to develop and maintain a high quality and coherent graduate training program, and to stimulate and coordinate fundamental and application-oriented research in the field of biomolecular sciences.
Research is gaining focus on processes in the actual situation in the living cell, rather than on in vitro model systems. The work can be divided into three themes, which have numerous interactions.

* Protein systems comprising biocatalytic and photosystems, RNA-protein complexes and membrane signal transduction complexes. Spectroscopic approaches play a central role, including mass spectroscopy of proteins. This technology is rapidly becoming essential in the identification of minute amounts of protein in relation to sequence databases and the analysis of post-translational modifications.
** Metabolic networks and gene expression. Investigating the interplay between large numbers of biomacromolecules, in particular proteins and nucleic acids. Quantitative modelling is gaining much importance in this field to test hypotheses and to bring our understanding from the qualitative to the more quantitative level.
*** Dynamic cellular organization, bringing together work on plant cells and fungi, in particular on plant and seed development and plant pathology.