About Us
We are proud of the long and distinguished history that the study of biochemistry and biophysics has had at The University of Chicago. To mention a few examples, the pioneering work of Maud Menten, which led to the Michaelis-Menten formalism for enzyme kinetics, was conducted while she was a graduate student at Chicago. Konrad Bloch carried out his Nobel-prize winning work here on cholesterol biosynthesis, Sam Weiss discovered RNA polymerase, and Eugene Kennedy, while a student in Albert Lehninger's group, demonstrated that oxidative phosphorylation and fatty acid oxidation were localized to the mitochondria. Among our current faculty colleagues, the work of Ed Taylor established the paradigm for how ATP hydrolysis is converted into a mechanical force in actomyosin, while Don Steiner made the seminal discovery that insulin is formed via the proteolytic processing of a single-chain precursor, proinsulin, providing the first example of a prohormone.
The tradition of excellence in biochemistry and biophysics continues today and is rapidly expanding. Our world-class group of professors, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers continue to make important discoveries at the interface of biology, chemistry, and physics. The interdisciplinary nature of the research being conducted in our department has only been enhanced by our recent move to the Gordon Center For Integrative Science, which houses research groups from biochemistry, chemistry, physics, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Ben May Institute for Cancer Research under the same roof. In the past three years, an impressive group of new junior and senior professors have joined our faculty, further expanding the scope of research in our department to include research on actin biochemistry, single-molecule biophysics, ion channel physiology, structural immunology, bacterial signal transduction, and protein engineering.
I invite you to browse our website to learn more about the exciting work going on in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Chicago. I think you will enjoy it.
Tony Kossiakoff, Chair
