Home | Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics | Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

Welcome to the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics

As one of the first departments of Biochemistry and Biophysics in the nation, we are proud of our strong tradition of combining cutting-edge technology with impactful biology. We continue to leverage this interdisciplinary approach to yield break-through discoveries in biomedicine.

Our faculty of over 30 primary and secondary members cover a broad range of research areas, with particular strengths in structural biology, chemical biology, gene regulation and protein folding.

We are also the proud home of the Eldridge Reeves Johnson Research Foundation which offers advanced physical instrumentation and instruction to researchers across campus.

We are actively growing, with several recent hires, and our faculty are broadly engaged across campus with many joint appointments in other departments, institutes and centers.

We welcome you to learn more about our department in the following pages or contact us.

News & Publications

Lynch Lab and Garcia Lab in Genome Research
November 2019
Deep profiling and custom databases improve detection of protesforms generated by alternative splicing
Moiseenkova-Bell Lab in eLife
October 2019
Structure-based characterization of novel TRPV5 inhibitors
Garcia Lab in Nature
October 2019
Alcohol metabolism contributes to brain histone acetylation
Shorter Lab in Molecular Cell
October 2019
Loss of Dynamic RNA Interaction and Aberrant Phase Separation Induced by Two Distinct Types of ALS/FTD-Linked FUS Mutations

Seminars & Events

Raiziss Rounds Seminar | Kendra Frederick, PhD
Thurs, December 12 • 12 noon | Austrian Auditorium, CRB
In vivo structural biology of metastable proteins using sensitivity-enhanced NMR
BMB Fall 2019 Lab Rotation Talks
Friday, December 13 • 3:30 pm | JF Library, 248 Anatomy-Chemistry
First years student lab rotation talks
Raiziss Rounds Seminar | Nikolaos Sgourakis, PhD
Thurs, December 19 • 12 noon | Austrian Auditorium, CRB
Integrative NMR, molecular modeling and functional studies of immune recognition complexes

Faculty Spotlight

Kim Sharp

Kim Sharp studies protein and nucleic acid structure and function using theoretical methods, computational and computer graphics tools. He currently splits his time between research, teaching, writing and BMB Graduate Group activities. Kim's current research includes work on development of virtual drug design tools and the mechanism of viral genome packing. In his role as BMB Graduate Group Chair, he is updating the graduate biostatistics curriculum and teaching Ph.D students Bayesian Statistics. Kim’s book, “Entropy and the Tao of Counting: A Brief Introduction to Statistical Mechanics and the Second Law of Thermodynamics,” will be published by Springer in January 2020. In his spare time, he collaborates with Franz Matschinsky on translating Ludwig Boltzmann’s papers on statistical mechanics intoEnglish.