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.

We are excited to announce the return of biomolecular NMR to PSOM with our new state-of-the-art nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) system now up and running! Read more about the equipment and how it's being used here. Thank you to Nik Sgourakis and his team for all their efforts in rebuilding NMR expertise here at Penn and CHOP.

News & Publications

Burslem on ACS Chemical Biology Advisory Board
March 2021
Congratulations to George Burslem on being named a member of Early Career Advisory Board for the journal ACS Chemical Biology
Daldal & Murakami Labs in Nature Communications
February 2021
Cryo-EM structures of engineered active bc 1-cbb 3 type CIII 2 CIV super-complexes and electronic communication between the complexes
Sgourakis Lab in Nature Communications
January 2021
Backbone-independent NMR resonance assignments of methyl probes in large proteins
Sellmyer Lab in ACS Chem Biol
January 2021
A Chemical Approach for Programmable Protein Outputs Based on Engineered Cell Interactions

Seminars & Events

Raiziss Rounds Seminars | Monica E. McCallum, PhD
Thurs, March 4, 2021 | 12 noon • on BlueJeans
Making Molecules from Microbes
Friday Research Discussions | Penning Lab
Fri, March 5, 2021 | 4 pm • on BlueJeans
AKR1C3 and prostate cancer

Faculty Spotlight

Kathy Fange Liu

Kathy F. Liu is an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania. The Liu lab is focused on the function of modifications in coding and non-coding RNAs in human diseases. Specifically, they use kinetics, structural biology methods, mass spectrometry, RNA biology techniques, combined with next-generation high-throughput sequencing techniques to investigate the crosstalk of modifications across RNA species in neuronal development. (Recent publication here.) Another research focus of the lab is on sex-specific features in the physiology and pathology in the neuronal system. An area of particular interest is the functions of sex-chromosome encoded RNA binding proteins in regulating protein translation and stress granule formation.