We’re one of the few programs in the country that trains in structure/function—where students learn at the molecular level and from the ground up to find the cause and cure of disease. In our program, students take the lead in their research and frequently collaborate with different labs. And the research? It’s cutting-edge in a supportive environment. See how we train the next generation of biochemists.

Considered the most prestigious award in the world, the Nobel Prize was given to two faculty in the Department of Biochemistry. In 2015, Dr. Paul Modrich received the Nobel in Chemistry for his mechanistic studies in DNA repair and in 2012, Dr. Robert Lefkowitz won the Nobel in Chemistry for his discoveries that reveal the inner workings of an important family of G protein-coupled receptors.

The Zhou Lab elucidates the connections among the structure, dynamics, and function of protein–protein and protein–ligand complexes and their roles in various cellular processes. Current efforts focus on protein complexes involved in bacterial membrane biosynthesis, co-transcriptional regulation, and translesion DNA synthesis using NMR, crystallography, cryoEM and enzymology. The Zhou lab has also played a major role in the development and application of innovative NMR technologies, including automated resonance assignment and high-resolution, high-dimensional spectral reconstruction from sparsely sampled data.