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

Black Lab in Cell
July 2019
Human Artificial Chromosomes that Bypass Centromeric DNA
Wilusz Lab in Nucleic Acids Research
July 2019
An improved method for circular RNA purification using RNase R that efficiently removes linear RNAs containing G-quadruplexes or structured 3' ends
Black Lab in Current Biology
July 2019
Structure of the Human Core Centromeric Nucleosome Complex
Collaborative Paper from Vinogradov Lab in ELife
July 2019
More homogeneous capillary flow and oxygenation in deeper cortical layers correlate with increased oxygen extraction

Seminars & Events

BMB Thesis Defense | Hejia (Henry) Wang
Wed, August 11, 11:00 am | Austrian Auditorium, CRB
Cytosolic delivery of inhibitory antibodies with cationic lipids
JF Lecture Series | Steven M. Block, Stanford University
Thursday, September 12 • 4:00 p.m. | Rubenstein Auditorium, Smilow
Optical Tweezers: Biophysics, One Molecule at a Time

Faculty Spotlight

Kenji Murakami, PhD

The Murakami lab seeks to understand the mechanisms of RNA polymerase II transcription activation in response to stress and its regulations in the context of chromatin. The lab is also interested in the mechanism of nucleotide excision repair (NER). In particular, we focus on the mechanism of how a set of factors serve dual functions in NER and transcription and how they are regulated. In all of these projects we use primarily structural (cryo-EM and cross-linking mass spectrometry) and biochemical approaches to dissect the architecture and function of the macromolecular complexes we study.