The Oxford Centre for Molecular Sciences
(OCMS), established in 1988, began as a grouping of scientists, sharing an interest in the structure
and function of proteins, based at the University of Oxford. It drew its members from
different disciplines and from all three of the University's Science Divisions: Life
and Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Medical
Sciences. It was founded to enable and facilitate interdisciplinary
research in protein science by collaborative groups of chemists,
physicists and biologists and to tackle major problems at the interfaces
of chemistry, biology and medicine. The resultant research enabled
OCMS to build an internationally recognised reputation for
structural and mechanistic studies on proteins, technique
development and many areas of biological chemistry. Since
the initiation of OCMS, many changes have taken place but
despite the wealth of data available, an adequate understanding
of how even the simplest organism 'works' at a molecular level
still requires a true interdisciplinary effort. The goal was
to obtain high-resolution structural information about genome
products and to define how these interact with each other
in a functioning organism.
OCMS was supported by grants from the Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council and the Engineering & Physical Science Research Council. The final grant ended at the end of 2005.
Links to summaries of OCMS research, and to some researchers and departments involved in OCMS over the years, can be found below.
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